Georgia’s Competition and Consumer Protection Agency (GCCA) has ruled that a Tbilisi-based parcel-forwarding company broke consumer protection law by handling a customer’s complaint exclusively through an AI chatbot, with no way to reach a human employee.
What happened
The case involves USA2Georgia, registered as Titiel USA Group LLC, which lets customers in Georgia order goods from the United States and have them forwarded home. According to the GCCA’s decision, published July 29, a customer who had paid for international shipping and storage could not retrieve a parcel and repeatedly contacted the company for help. Each time, its AI-based customer-service system returned the same automated reply, without resolving the problem or transferring the customer to a staff member.
The agency found this violated Georgia’s Law on Consumer Rights Protection, which requires merchants to keep communication with customers effective and unobstructed. “Using artificial intelligence and other innovative technologies does not relieve merchants of their legal obligations to consumers,” the GCCA said in its decision.
What the company must do
USA2Georgia now has one month to restore the affected customer’s rights and bring its support system into compliance, according to the agency. If it fails to do so, it faces a fine of up to 2% of its previous year’s revenue; a repeat violation within 12 months would double the penalty.
A test case for AI in Georgian business
The ruling arrives as AI adoption accelerates across the country’s private sector — a recent BAG survey found 84% of Georgian companies are already adopting AI in some part of their operations, often including customer-facing chatbots. The decision signals that regulators expect a human escalation option behind any automated support system, a question businesses trading with the EU are also weighing under the EU AI Act’s rules for Georgian companies.