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on the evening of august 29, a netizen posted a message saying that the reply from the official wechat public account of nantong university's finance department was "condescending" and "weird." the netizen consulted the wechat public account about the deadline for payment, but the reply not only did not clearly inform the time, but instead accused him of not actively paying the fees, "forcing" the school to meet the deadline, which made both parties embarrassed, and also said that the students who consulted such questions had "unique ideas."

screenshot of the reply from the wechat official account of nantong university's finance department/social media screenshot

in response to this, a staff member of the finance department of nantong university said on august 30 that the reply was an automatic reply from the beta version of ai, not a human response, and was not directed at any teacher or student. on the morning of the 30th, the staff had already replaced the content after discovering the problem. since few people use this function, the problem was discovered late, and they also apologized for this.

screenshot of the modified reply content on wechat official account/official wechat account of the finance department of nantong university

some netizens also commented that the tone of the public account’s replies “has always been like this” and “like an untrained ai.”

according to the official website of nantong university, nantong university was founded in 1912. it originated from the private nantong medical school and nantong textile school founded by mr. zhang jian, a famous modern industrialist and educator. in 2004, the former nantong medical college, nantong institute of technology, and nantong normal college merged to form the new nantong university. the school is a comprehensive university jointly established by the people's government of jiangsu province and the ministry of transport, and is a university under the jiangsu high-level university construction peak plan. the school's comprehensive strength ranks 100th in the "2024 china university evaluation", the nature index ranks 71st among mainland universities, and the esi ranks 113th among mainland universities in the comprehensive ranking.