In the novel, we are first introduced to the Hendrix's AI (renamed to the Raven in the TV adaptation) when Kovacs walks into the lobby and tries to check in. He's prevented from doing so at first by Dimitri Kadmin and his squad, but when Kovacs is finally able to make payment and becomes a paying customer, the AI moves to protect its (only?) client by deploying a "twenty-millimeter automatic cannon" and killing them all. Later, when Kristen Ortega arrives to investigate, she explains that the cannon was installed when "the corporate wars turned nasty". She also explains that due to a trading crash shortly after these wars, that "the Hendrix graded to artificial intelligence status and bought itself out." Then she says this:
"Lot of the hotels on this strip are AI." She grinned at me through the smoke. "That's why no one stays in them. Shame, really. I read somewhere that they're hard wired to want customers the way people want sex. That's got to be frustrating, right?"
The inference here is that the Hendrix will do anything to please a customer, even kill. Later, when Kovacs meets Miriam Bancroft in his suite, we see more of this behaviour, namely that the AI let her into the room without his permission and that it plays mood music for them.
The makers of the TV show adaptation describe it like this:
“We liked the idea that people don’t stay in the hotels anymore, which is from the book, and also that the hotels have a slightly stalker-esque quality, also from the book,” Kalogridis says. “It felt like that argued for a persona that was a little persistent and maybe a little off-putting.”
So it seems that the AI hotels in Altered Carbon like their clients just a little too much for the citizenry to handle.
