AI quirks lead to Rickroll incident

Flo Crivello, founder of Lindy, recently faced an unusual issue when a client was Rickrolled by one of the company’s AI assistants. Instead of providing a tutorial video, the AI sent the famous Rick Astley music video, highlighting the quirks of large language models.

The incident was traced back to the way the AI predicted the most likely sequence of text, leading it to send the prank video. Although only two such cases occurred, Crivello acted quickly, implementing a prompt to prevent further Rickrolling.

This incident underscores how deeply internet culture can influence AI models. Similar problems have surfaced in other AI systems, like Google’s, which have also struggled with the content they are trained on.

Despite these challenges, advancements in AI technology are making it easier to patch such errors. Lindy has since corrected the issue, ensuring clients receive the correct content without unwelcome surprises.