Woman says Norway's tax agency AI chatbot told her a Swedish passport would do as ID, but the Tromsø office refused it; agency says the chatbot was right
In an opinion piece published by Nordnorsk debatt on 20 June 2026, a communications adviser from Nord-Troms who had moved from Sweden to Norway wrote that she needed to identify herself at a tax office to complete her moving notification. Her Norwegian passport had expired and only her Swedish passport was valid. The Norwegian Tax Administration (Skatteetaten) phone line was closed for the day, so she asked the agency's chatbot on its website, describing her case in detail, and she says it answered that she could identify herself with her Swedish passport. She travelled about four hours each way by bus to the Tromsø tax office, where, by her account, staff said the Swedish passport could not be used, told her she could not rely on the chatbot and should phone instead, and she returned with the errand unfinished. She told kode24 she had to take a whole day off work and was first shocked and then very angry; staff also told her, she says, that she should first have registered her Swedish citizenship on the agency's website. She wrote that a colleague put the same question to the chatbot a week later and received the same answer, and that when challenged the chatbot replied that it lacked data on which ID documents are accepted, marking the reply as answered with artificial intelligence. In a reply on 26 June 2026 an acting department director at Skatteetaten wrote that its AI-based chatbot gave entirely correct information in this case, because a Nordic citizen with a valid passport from another Nordic country can use it at a tax office; he told kode24 the chatbot is instructed to answer from skatteetaten.no and that AI-based technology has a margin of error. The digitalisation minister told kode24 the model may seem to have a little way to go. Whether the chatbot's answer or the office's refusal was wrong is disputed, and the date of the trip is not stated.
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution disputed · 4 sources · Added 28/10/2026