France's Lucie chatbot taken offline after absurd responses
France's government-backed Lucie chatbot was taken offline three days after its January 2025 launch due to generating nonsensical responses, including claiming cows produce eggs and miscalculating basic arithmetic. The developer acknowledged inadequate testing and preparation for public scrutiny before deploying the early-stage research system.
What happened
Launched on January 23, 2025, Lucie quickly garnered criticism for absurd outputs, with users reporting that when asked about cow's eggs, the bot incorrectly claimed they were produced by cows and were a source of protein.
The chatbot miscalculated basic math problems, such as answering 5×(3+2) with 17 instead of the correct 25, leading to widespread ridicule on social media.
Linagora Group disabled public access to the chatbot three days after its launch due to the backlash.
Reported impact
The project's failure was seen to reflect poorly on France's ambitions in the AI sector and raised questions about the readiness of such technologies for public use.
Index analysis
Lucie was at an early stage of training, having received only a single round of instruction fine-tuning, with the developer acknowledging that responses were not yet reliable.
The chatbot's model was stated to be hundreds of times smaller than models behind ChatGPT and was not designed for mathematics or coding tasks.
Governance controls
Linagora admitted they were 'swept away by excitement' and failed to prepare for public scrutiny, launching as an academic research initiative without adequate testing or communication regarding its limitations.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.