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

[highplainsdem]

Source: Guardian

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.

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Louise Baxter, the head of the scams team at National Trading Standards, said people should not assume a website is genuine just because it is recommended by an AI tool.

“Consumers are increasingly turning to AI tools for advice and recommendations, but criminals are adapting just as quickly. The fact that scam websites can appear in AI-generated results is worrying, and is a stark reminder that fraudsters will exploit any new technology that helps them reach potential victims,” she said.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2026/jun/07/ai-chatgpt-shopping-scams-fake-websites

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"Poisoned" is overly dramatic here - the fake websites are not a new scam in and of themselves.

What's new is AI companies trying to get their customers to stop using their own brains and doing their own searches, and instead just trust less-than-intelligent and often hallucinating chatbots to come up with the best recommendations.

ChatGPT can't be the only bot this is happening with, even though this is the first news story I've seen about it happening.

Generative AI does make fraudulent websites much easier to create, though. I've posted earlier threads about how easy genAI has made it to spread disinformation through fake news websites. It's a great tool for fraud, especially when AI users are dumbed down.