On Monday, a developer utilizing the favored AI-powered code editor Cursor observed one thing unusual: Switching between machines immediately logged them out, breaking a widespread workflow for programmers who use a number of gadgets. When the consumer contacted Cursor help, an agent named “Sam” instructed them it was anticipated habits beneath a new coverage. However no such coverage existed, and Sam was a bot. The AI mannequin made the coverage up, sparking a wave of complaints and cancellation threats documented on Hacker Information and Reddit.
This marks the most recent occasion of AI confabulations (additionally referred to as “hallucinations”) inflicting potential enterprise harm. Confabulations are a sort of “artistic gap-filling” response the place AI fashions invent plausible-sounding however false data. As an alternative of admitting uncertainty, AI fashions typically prioritize creating believable, assured responses, even when meaning manufacturing data from scratch.
For corporations deploying these programs in customer-facing roles with out human oversight, the results might be rapid and expensive: pissed off clients, broken belief, and, in Cursor’s case, doubtlessly canceled subscriptions.
How It Unfolded
The incident started when a Reddit consumer named BrokenToasterOven observed that whereas swapping between a desktop, laptop computer, and a distant dev field, Cursor periods have been unexpectedly terminated.
“Logging into Cursor on one machine instantly invalidates the session on another machine,” BrokenToasterOven wrote in a message that was later deleted by r/cursor moderators. “That is a vital UX regression.”
Confused and pissed off, the consumer wrote an e mail to Cursor help and shortly acquired a reply from Sam: “Cursor is designed to work with one gadget per subscription as a core safety characteristic,” learn the e-mail reply. The response sounded definitive and official, and the consumer didn’t suspect that Sam was not human.
After the preliminary Reddit put up, customers took the put up as official affirmation of an precise coverage change—one which broke habits important to many programmers’ each day routines. “Multi-device workflows are desk stakes for devs,” wrote one consumer.
Shortly afterward, a number of customers publicly introduced their subscription cancellations on Reddit, citing the non-existent coverage as their motive. “I actually simply cancelled my sub,” wrote the unique Reddit poster, including that their office was now “purging it fully.” Others joined in: “Yep, I am canceling as effectively, that is asinine.” Quickly after, moderators locked the Reddit thread and eliminated the unique put up.
“Hey! We have now no such coverage,” wrote a Cursor consultant in a Reddit reply three hours later. “You are in fact free to make use of Cursor on a number of machines. Sadly, that is an incorrect response from a front-line AI help bot.”
AI Confabulations as a Enterprise Threat
The Cursor debacle remembers a comparable episode from February 2024 when Air Canada was ordered to honor a refund coverage invented by its personal chatbot. In that incident, Jake Moffatt contacted Air Canada’s help after his grandmother died, and the airline’s AI agent incorrectly instructed him he might ebook a regular-priced flight and apply for bereavement charges retroactively. When Air Canada later denied his refund request, the corporate argued that “the chatbot is a separate authorized entity that’s chargeable for its personal actions.” A Canadian tribunal rejected this protection, ruling that corporations are chargeable for data offered by their AI instruments.
Quite than disputing accountability as Air Canada had completed, Cursor acknowledged the error and took steps to make amends. Cursor cofounder Michael Truell later apologized on Hacker Information for the confusion concerning the non-existent coverage, explaining that the consumer had been refunded and the problem resulted from a backend change meant to enhance session safety that unintentionally created session invalidation issues for some customers.
“Any AI responses used for e mail help at the moment are clearly labeled as such,” he added. “We use AI-assisted responses as the primary filter for e mail help.”
Nonetheless, the incident raised lingering questions on disclosure amongst customers, since many individuals who interacted with Sam apparently believed it was human. “LLMs pretending to be folks (you named it Sam!) and never labeled as such is clearly meant to be misleading,” one consumer wrote on Hacker Information.
Whereas Cursor mounted the technical bug, the episode exhibits the dangers of deploying AI fashions in customer-facing roles with out correct safeguards and transparency. For a firm promoting AI productiveness instruments to builders, having its personal AI help system invent a coverage that alienated its core customers represents a significantly awkward self-inflicted wound.
“There may be a specific amount of irony that individuals strive actually laborious to say that hallucinations will not be a huge downside anymore,” one consumer wrote on Hacker Information, “after which a firm that may profit from that narrative will get immediately harm by it.”
This story initially appeared on Ars Technica.
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