Abstract To describe two correlated events, the Alice–Bob (AB) systems were constructed by Lou through the symmetry of the shifted parity, time reversal and charge conjugation. In this paper, the coupled AB system of the Kadomtsev–Petviashvili equation, which is a useful model in natural science, is established. By introducing an extended Bäcklund transformation and its bilinear formation, the symmetry breaking soliton, lump and breather solutions of this system are derived with the aid of some ansatze functions. Figures show these fascinating symmetry breaking structures of the explicit solutions.