‘Poisoned’ AI: the ChatGPT shopping scams that lead to fake websites

You want to buy a new bag and so you ask ChatGPT for help. You have always liked Russell & Bromley so you ask ChatGPT what is popular there at the moment. The artificial intelligence (AI) assistant gives you cross body, shoulder, casual and formal options with the prices listed beside them. You click through from the sources to what looks like the official Russell & Bromley site and buy your new bag, which is conveniently on sale. The item will never arrive, however. You have handed money over to a scammer and your bank details have been harvested through an elaborate fraud where fake sites are created to look convincingly like real retailers. ChatGPT search that shows a fake site as one of its sources Ask Silver, a scam-checking service, says cloned sites have been showing up in search results on ChatGPT. The ones it has seen are rip-offs of Russell & Bromley and the furnishings retailer Dunelm. Anna Jones of Ask Silver says it is possible that the large language model (LLM) that powers ChatGPT has been “poisoned”. This is when malicious content is inserted into the information an AI learns from – such as through cloned webpages put up by the fraudster. …