Description: Charlie the Chatbot, an AI-powered system deployed by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), has reportedly been providing inaccurate or incomplete tax-related information to members of the public. An audit by the Auditor General of Canada reportedly found the chatbot produced correct responses in fewer than half of tested cases. The system has been publicly available across multiple CRA webpages since March 2020 and reportedly used by millions of users.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) , Government of Canada and Unknown generative AI developers developed an AI system deployed by Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and Government of Canada, which harmed General public , General public of Canada , Epistemic integrity and Canadian taxpayers.
Alleged implicated AI system: Charlie the Chatbot
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1310
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2025-12-12
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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The Canada Revenue Agency blew nearly $20 million of taxpayer money on an "AI" chatbot that repeatedly gave out the wrong information to Canadians trying to file their taxes.
The CRA's AI tool, named Charlie the Chatbot, was accurate about …
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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