While purchasing a hot dog and a pair of Gatorades, a Circle K shopper nearly made a donation sizeable enough to purchase an NBA franchise.
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During checkout, an AI-powered self-checkout kiosk added an $8 billion donation to a customer's order. The shopper shared a picture of the staggering donation amount on Reddit, saying, "I just wanted a hot dog."
According to the customer, the kiosk prompted him to make a multi-billion-dollar donation to the Red Cross.
"Yesterday, tho, it threw this little gem in thinking I wouldn't notice an $8.5 Billion Donation to the Red Cross," they wrote. "Don't get me wrong, I like what they do and all, but this is a bit much."
Circle K began using AI-powered self-checkout kiosks in 2022. However, the process has been anything but seamless.
At a Circle K location in Canada, the customer noted that he previously experienced the kiosks adding items that were never scanned. Despite the shaky results, the customer opted to use the kiosks since all the workers were busy.
Although he'd seen unscanned items added before, the massive donation added to the ledger was a first.
Like most of us, the shopper didn't have $8 billion on tap and alerted the store clerk before finishing the transaction.
The customer said the employee was equally as surprised, and the two laughed about the exorbitant donation request.
AI-Powered Services Have Been a Costly Business Endeavor
Circle K is not the only business to experience troubles with AI-powered Services.
In recent years, several companies, including Walmart, Uber, Klarna, Microsoft and Duolingo. However, the switch from human to AI-powered processes has not been seamless.
Not only has it led to a few hiccups, such as Circle K's $8 billion blunder, but AI has also proven more expensive than the humans it was set to replace, according to Forbes.
Uber's CTO recently disclosed that the company burned through its entire 2026 AI coding budget in four months.
Uber was not the only company whose pockets were drained by AI. Microsoft, which has invested approximately $13 billion in OpenAI and writes up to 30% of its own code with generative AI, instructed engineers in a major division to stop using an AI coding assistant because the bills became too costly.
