An artificial intelligence (AI) mix-up has led to some unexpected questions at a beloved bakery and restaurant in Millbank, Ont. The owner of Anna Mae’s Bakery and Restaurant said she was confused when she first heard concerns about the future of the longstanding business. “Last week we started getting questions from customers coming in and just asking if we were closing,” Amanda Herrfort, the owner of Anna Mae’s Bakery and Restaurant, said. “We were very confused because we had never, ever had that conversation or discussion of any sort.” A quick internet search revealed a bakery called “Anna Mae’s” had just announced it was closing. However, that business is in Illinois. “If you actually looked up our name and our website, it came up normal. It came up fine. It said nothing about us closing.” Herrfort said she went from merely confused to seriously concerned on July 18 when she was sent a screenshot of a Google AI generated search result that stated her store in Millbank was closing on July 31. “Panic is what I was thinking. How could this information be so wrong?” she asked. “To have somebody just all of a sudden say you’re closing down and have that big rumour going around is quite terrifying because we are certainly not closing down.” Herrfort used the Google AI chatbot the tell the company about the problem. “I just decided to put it into the messages saying hi, we are the owners, we are not closing, I think you have us confused with the Anna Mae’s in Illinois,” Herrfort said. “And then it wrote back and said, ‘Oh yes, I can see how this could be detrimental and we will get this fixed in our research right away.’” Although it appears that the search results have been fixed, Herrfort still has concerns. “It was just a terrible thing to know that all your hard work can be undermined in such a short period of time by a confusing AI message,” she said. “This is something that we’re seeing much more often” Ritesh Kotak is a cyber security tech analyst based in Toronto. He said this type of issue is common. “When you don’t have a human in the loop and there’s information that’s being scraped and being processed, there is a very real possibility that errors can happen,” Kotak said. According to Kotak simple errors can be presented as fact, and in some cases, facts are made up entirely. “We even hear about AI making up information, this is what we call a hallucination,” Kotak explained. He said oftentimes scammers are behind this type of misinformation, but that does not appear to be the case in this situation. “This is something that we’re seeing much more often, and AI has made it really easy for scammers to replicate websites, so what a lot of people are seeing now is deals that are just too good to be true,” said Kotak. Kotak said when you come across something that sounds strange or too good to be true, do more research. “Sometimes go old school, pick up the phone, call the company, call the organization, and just validate and verify the information.” CTV News reached out to Google for comment. They acknowledged the request, but did not provide a statement by the time of publication. Anna Mae’s Bakery and Restaurant in Millbank remains open and there are no plans to close the business anytime soon.
