At Futurism, Victor Tangermann replies “Claim denied”:

We were struck this week when the Wall Street Journal reported that Allstate, a major insurance company, had largely handed over the task of writing claims emails over to an AI system.

The WSJ’s source wasn’t remotely controversial; it was Allstate’s own chief information officer, Zulfi Jeevanjee.

“The claim agent still looks at them just to make sure they’re accurate, but they’re not writing them anymore,” Jeevanjee enthused to the newspaper.

“Allstate Is Demanding We Delete These Quotes by Its Exec About How It’s Using AI to Write Insurance Emails ,” February 13, 2005

So Futurism ran a pointer piece on the story and moved on. Well …

But then we got a genuinely bizarre email from someone on Allstate’s media relations team, claiming the WSJ’s reporting was flawed and that the newspaper was on the verge of taking it down.

“I’m currently working with the Wall Street Journal to have it updated/removed due to the high number of inaccuracies,” the Allstate spokesperson told us, demanding that we delete our blog entirely. “Using AI to Write Insurance Emails”

Of course Futurism staff refused, saying they would update only if WSJ did. The tech mag is not a PR agency and Allstate is not a client.

Later, WSJ updated its story but corrected only two minor points. The main point — at Allstate your mail is answered mainly by a machine — is untouched. Yet Allstate has continued to pester Futurism with a “preposterous table laying out exactly which quotes they wanted modified or removed.”

Two — no, three — useful strategies for Allstate

Futurism is not backing down. And if Allstate is worried about customers’ reaction to machine mail, here are two useful strategies it could consider:

1. Think about that possibility before you dive deep into machine mail world.
2. If the shout hits the fan, don’t start threatening media. Nothing spreads the story faster or guarantees it more publicity than that.

Oh and,

3. Keep min mind that, if you try suing, the process of discovery will guarantee that all kinds of grubby little details come to light and there will be no one you can safely threaten then.

And here we thought machine mail would be boring… 😉