Back in April, the rental car company Hertz announced that it would be using UVeye, an AI damage scanning hardward and software system from a former defense contractor of the same name, to check its cars for damage after they were returned.
It didn’t take long for problems to arise. As our sister site The Drive reported last month, customers soon started complaining that Hertz was charging them hundreds of dollars for minor cosmetic scuffs that would have been shrugged off by a human employee, or in some cases for phantom damage when none was visible at all.
As much as Hertz wants the storm to pass, anecdotal reports make it sound like the system is still a disaster — and one that’s alienating customers even as other rental providers eye similarly divisive tech.
In a post on the r/HertzRentals subreddit, one user insisted they were “done” with the agency after UVeye flagged nonexistent dings when they returned their rental.
After renting a car for a week from a Hertz location at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, the user said that they were alerted that UVeye had flagged some apparent damage on the vehicle. When they checked the car, however, there was nothing visible.
Perturbed by the apparent mistake, the user tried to speak to employees and managers at the Hertz counter, but none were able to help, and all “pointed fingers at the ‘AI scanner.'” They were told to contact customer support — but even that proved futile after representatives claimed they “can’t do anything.”
“Did the AI scanner [misinterpret] water reflections or dirt on the black car as damage?” they pondered. “There’s no way to even present that possibility, no path to defend yourself. It’s an unchallengeable, automated accusation.”
According to a recent New York Post article, Hertz’ UVeye scanners only appear to be deployed at the company’s airport locations for now. Still, recent reporting from our sister publication The Drive indicates that other rental companies are investing in similar damage-detection AI software.
In interviews with The Drive, disgruntled customers of the Germany-based car rental company Sixt described being fined hundreds of dollars over purported damage detected by the agency’s AI, Car Gate. Upon closer inspection, however, it became clear that the images used as evidence had something fishy going on.
Two American readers also wrote to the website saying that they had been fined $650 each after Sixt’s AI scanners flagged damage, but when they looked at the photos attached to the fines, they noticed that the photos did not match the timeframes in which they rented the cars. In each case, the photos showed damage that occurred before their rentals, meaning they shouldn’t have been responsible for the damage at all.
In both of those Sixt cases and the latest one from Reddit, the charges were eventually dropped after ample complaints. But how many other people hit a brick wall with customer service, sighed, and coughed up a completely unfair charge?
Though Hertz claimed in a statement to Car and Driver last month that UVeye’s purpose is to bring “greater transparency, precision and speed” to renting, it’s unclear what, if anything, has improved with its usage.
Add it all up, and it’s a perfect example of how algorithms have been deployed to the detriment of regular people since long before ChatGPT. In theory, the idea is that everybody is treated fairly under the same rules, but in reality, governments and corporations end up offloading decisionmaking onto automated systems and dodging accountability when those judgments are flawed.
This isn’t just an issue for people who rent cars; look at it as a sign of things to come, as companies — and governments — around the world start using AI to replace human labor, even when the tech isn’t remotely ready for primetime.
More on automotive AI: Car Dealerships Are Replacing Phone Staff With AI Voice Agents
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