Your community college’s AI chatbot is supposed to help you navigate financial aid, admissions, and campus services. Instead, it’s probably giving you outdated information and sending you on wild goose chases across campus. And California is paying serious money for the privilege.

Community college districts across the state are dropping millions of dollars annually on chatbot systems that consistently fail to provide accurate answers. Three districts responding to recent reporting disclosed annual costs ranging from about $151,000 to nearly half a million dollars. The Los Angeles Community College District alone has approved contracts and amendments totaling about $3.8 million through 2029. That’s a lot of cash for technology that can’t even correctly name its own college president.

When tested, these chatbots struggled with basic questions. East Los Angeles College’s bot provided an outdated name for the college president, couldn’t get financial aid office hours right, and gave contradictory answers depending on whether students asked in English or Spanish. Fresno City College’s chatbot repeatedly delivered unclear or incorrect information about campus services. The only time it successfully answered a question about the campus food pantry was when a student accidentally typed a typo.

Student experiences confirm the frustration. Pablo Aguirre, a computer science major at East Los Angeles College, abandoned the chatbot after it kept asking him clarifying questions instead of giving him straight answers about financial aid. He now defaults to Google, Reddit, and the college website. Reanna Carlson, a student government vice president at Fresno City College, called the chatbot “outdated” and said it can’t effectively navigate campus services. International students, in particular, worry that following inaccurate chatbot guidance could jeopardize their visa status.

Here’s the thing: college officials aren’t denying the problems. They’re just blaming the technology’s configuration rather than the technology itself. Many chatbots rely on manually maintained databases of frequently asked questions that staff review only once or twice a year. If your question isn’t in that database, you’re out of luck.

The good news? Some districts are finally modernizing. Santa Monica College switched to a ChatGPT-integrated system that scans the college’s website for current information, and it’s performing significantly better. The Los Angeles district says it plans to transition to a new AI chatbot platform using generative AI by late spring.

District officials defend the spending by pointing to heavy usage. The Los Angeles district colleges handle 5,000 to 7,000 interactions monthly. That’s thousands of student questions answered 24/7 without paying around-the-clock staff. But when the answers are wrong, round-the-clock availability doesn’t mean much. Until these systems actually work reliably, California’s students deserve better than expensive chatbots that send them scrambling to Reddit for real answers.