On Monday, a developer utilizing the favored AI-powered code editor Cursor observed one thing unusual: Switching between machines immediately logged them out, breaking a typical workflow for programmers who use a number of units. When the person contacted Cursor assist, an agent named “Sam” advised them it was anticipated habits underneath a brand new coverage. However no such coverage existed, and Sam was a bot. The AI mannequin made the coverage up, sparking a wave of complaints and cancellation threats documented on Hacker Information and Reddit.
This marks the newest occasion of AI confabulations (additionally known as “hallucinations”) inflicting potential enterprise injury. Confabulations are a kind of “artistic gap-filling” response the place AI fashions invent plausible-sounding however false info. As an alternative of admitting uncertainty, AI fashions typically prioritize creating believable, assured responses, even when meaning manufacturing info from scratch.
For corporations deploying these methods in customer-facing roles with out human oversight, the implications might be rapid and expensive: annoyed prospects, broken belief, and, in Cursor’s case, probably canceled subscriptions.
The way it unfolded
The incident started when a Reddit person named BrokenToasterOven observed that whereas swapping between a desktop, laptop computer, and a distant dev field, Cursor periods had been unexpectedly terminated.
“Logging into Cursor on one machine instantly invalidates the session on another machine,” BrokenToasterOven wrote in a message that was later deleted by r/cursor moderators. “It is a important UX regression.”
Confused and annoyed, the person wrote an e-mail to Cursor assist and shortly obtained a reply from Sam: “Cursor is designed to work with one system per subscription as a core safety function,” learn the e-mail reply. The response sounded definitive and official, and the person didn’t suspect that Sam was not human.
After the preliminary Reddit publish, customers took the publish as official affirmation of an precise coverage change—one which broke habits important to many programmers’ every day routines. “Multi-device workflows are desk stakes for devs,” wrote one person.
Shortly afterward, a number of customers publicly introduced their subscription cancellations on Reddit, citing the non-existent coverage as their purpose. “I actually simply cancelled my sub,” wrote the unique Reddit poster, including that their office was now “purging it utterly.” Others joined in: “Yep, I am canceling as nicely, that is asinine.” Quickly after, moderators locked the Reddit thread and eliminated the unique publish.
