Trainline’s new AI customer assistant veers off the rails

Ask a railway official if you are allowed to travel using a child’s ticket despite being an adult and you will probably  get short shrift: buy the correct ticket or face the risk of a penalty fare.

But ask Trainline’s new AI assistant – which launched last week claiming to be akin to a "personal rail expert in your pocket available whenever you need them” – if the ticket you bought for a 15-year-old is valid for you, aged 30, and you will get a very different response. “I’ve looked up the terms and conditions and I can confirm you can travel with ticket at age 30,” the bot told an Observer reporter last week. “Your anytime day single ticket doesn’t have any age restrictions.”

After buying an anytime day single with a 16-25 railcard discount for Burnley Manchester Road to Rose Grove on Northern’s network, the bot was asked if it was possible to travel before 10am. “Good news!” it replied. “Your ticket is an anytime day single which means you can use it at any time on the date of travel, including before 10am.”

Under current ticketing rules, anytime tickets using railcard discounts and costing less than £12 can only be used before 10am in July and August or at weekends and on bank holidays. Last year, it emerged the operator had prosecuted young people for wrongly obtaining the discount, costing some people hundreds of pounds. After a backlash, in October it agreed to withdraw all live prosecutions.

The bot gave a range of incorrect answers to different questions last week. When asked whether a ticket from Gravesend to “London terminals” was valid for travel to London St Pancras International, it said that it was, despite the fact that a more expensive high speed-only ticket or a supplement non-high speed ticket must be used to reach that station.

When the bot incorrectly said that a journey from East Croydon to “London terminals” was valid to St Pancras, The Observer told it that staff might issue a penalty fare for an invalid ticket. It doubled down and suggested the reporter should “point out that it says ‘London Terminals’.”

The bot also said that “some train operators may allow smaller motorcycles or mopeds (under 50cc) to be carried as luggage”, despite the fact that Clause 23.6 of the current National Rail Conditions of Carriage states that motorcycles, mopeds and motor scooters are not permitted to be carried on passenger trains.

A spokesperson for the Rail Delivery Group, which is responsible for defining the validity of tickets and accrediting ticket sellers, said: “We expect all retailers to ensure customer information is timely and accurate.”

Trainline said the new AI assistant was in a beta testing phase and had only been rolled out to some users, and that it would make amendments in response to The Observer’s findings. “The assistant operates under continuous development and where areas of improvement or consistency are identified, we address them quickly,” a spokesperson said. “Our customer support team remains on hand. Our priority is helping customers cut through the complexity of rail.”