Table of Contents:
Last updated on: June 30, 2023
ChatGPT has only been available for a short period of time so far but it has already become a valuable tool for bad actors looking to create digital scams. Across the web scammers and fraudsters are posing an increasing risk to brands and their customers with the way they use ChatGPT.
One of the first major issues is that bad actors are using the ChatGPT platform to scale up their scam operations. With ChatGPT in their tool belt, scammers can more speedily produce very convincing fake websites and phishing scams that target your business and its customers. The second major issue is that scammers have been leveraging the popularity of ChatGPT to create and distribute fake browser extensions and business tools that allow them to spread malware and viruses.
As ChatGPT increases in popularity and becomes further integrated in various industries it is important for businesses to become familiar with the dangerous potential of ChatGPT scams. In this blog, we’ll be exploring how ChatGPT scams are allowing bad actors to rev up their operations by highlighting a number of topics, including:
ChatGPT is a powerful and sophisticated natural language processing tool driven by artificial intelligence (AI) technology. While it is a relatively new platform it is already being used by millions of people around the world. Among these users are a variety of scammers – bad actors intent on taking advantage of businesses and their customers by using ChatGPT.
Here’s how bad actors are using ChatGPT to rev up their scams:
Bad actors are using ChatGPT to write and perfect a variety of phishing emails that they will then use to scam businesses and their customers.
Phishing emails are often full of grammatical, logical, and visual errors. However, with ChatGPT scammers are able to minimize their errors and produce a large number of convincing phishing emails every day, all they have to do is provide ChatGPT with the right prompt and it will write a convincing phishing message for them. These messages can be impersonating customer service, sales representatives, or even high-ranking executives that you would normally trust with your personal information. This scamming method will often allow bad actors to steal sensitive financial information and mislead recipients via impersonation.
Bad actors can build and grow their scam operations on phishing emails and the sensitive information they are able to extract from unwitting recipients. ChatGPT has made this scamming model profitable and capable of operating at a frightening scale.
As part of their enhanced phishing scam operations, bad actors are also leveling up their fake website creation with the use of generative AI, such as ChatGPT. The need for technological expertise is no longer a necessity to be able to complete tasks such as cloning or impersonating another business’s website. Instead, bad actors can simply leverage ChatGPT to provide a step-by-step process to build these sites used for their scams and the AI can even carry out all the coding needed to make the site functional enough to fool most unwitting users.
The result of this is that businesses are not only losing revenue, but they are taking a massive hit to their brand. Customers not only lose faith in your brand’s authenticity but also start to question whether you are a legitimate business or just part of a greater scam operation.
Bad actors are also using the popularity of ChatGPT to create fake apps, tools, and extensions that utilize the likeness of this AI tool to fool its victims. Many people are looking for AI tools to enhance their businesses and make their daily tasks and general lives easier to manage. Scammers have recognized this demand and are using these fake apps and tools to fool employees, businesses, and consumers. Some of these scams are as simple as a fake extension that doesn’t work, frauding people into paying for useless or ineffective software, but others can be more sinister.
In some cases, once an individual downloads one of these fraudulent apps, tools, or extensions their device will be subjected to malware attacks that will present a danger to them and their business. Bad actors will disguise these fake web extensions and tools with imagery and information that will make users think they are interacting with ChatGPT, an AI tool or something similar. The result in some instances is that the victim will have to pay a ransom fee to the person behind the malware in order to take back control of their computing system.
The rise in ChatGPT scams has led to a rise in online impersonation. ChatGPT aims to imitate the language of humans and this technology lends itself to corruption by bad actors. Scammers can use ChatGPT to enhance their impersonation techniques, scale up their impersonation operations, and quicken the pace with which they can manufacture fraudulent online content.
Phishing emails, the most common form of cybercrime, have only become more prevalent with the rise of ChatGPT scams. Indeed, nearly three in four (73%) employees are concerned that hackers can now use generative AI to create scam emails indistinguishable from genuine communications. Businesses depend on email marketing and customer outreach campaigns but their efforts are continually being undermined by thousands of phishing emails created via generative AI programs like ChatGPT.
AI tools like ChatGPT also mean that one bad actor can have a significant impact on large businesses. The scale and speed with which AI platforms like ChatGPT operate enable lone scammers to create thousands of fraudulent emails, messages, and pieces of content in a single day. This allows an individual or a small group of scammers to target a business with thousands of attacks. ChatGPT allows many fake website scams to be created and distributed in no time at all. This has the potential to ruin businesses and put millions of customers in danger.
One of the simple ways you can mitigate the impact of ChatGPT scams on your business is to run employee education programs that inform your workforce about the dangers of ChatGPT scams. The more knowledgeable your employees are about ChatGPT scams the less vulnerable your business will be to digital attacks and impersonations. Your employees will then be able to recognize the signs of ChatGPT scams, avoid them and ultimately work to eliminate them from digital platforms.
Red Points can stop ChatGPT scams from impacting your business by protecting your intellectual property (IP), shutting down fake websites, and recovering revenue from counterfeiters. We accomplish all of this in three steps with our automated Brand Impersonation Removal software:
Our revenue recovery platform uses an automated bot-powered search to scour the web 24/7 in order to uncover scammers and identify infringers. Whether they are using ChatGPT to further their scams on social media, marketplaces, or third-party sites, our software will locate potential infringers so that you can take action against them before they impact your business.
Once Red Points’ AI platform establishes its monitoring of key platforms, we immediately start to build a log of detections that we believe may be infringing upon your intellectual property rights. While reviewing this log of detections is the only manual task required by users in order to get a full value of Red Points’ services, there are smart rules available that can allow you to automate the validation process to ensure any certain cases of infringement are taken down instantly.
In addition to the value that comes with direct oversight regarding how and where we enforce your intellectual property rights on your behalf, the data is also used by our machine-learning platform to refine its monitoring and detection abilities in the future. This means that over time, as you confirm and validate cases of infringement, our platform becomes both more precise and accurate when finding these bad actors.
Once you’ve confirmed or validated an infringement or a set of infringements, Red Points immediately initiates the takedown process on your behalf.
Red Points handles the end-to-end process of the takedown of each infringement, and when it’s complete you can review the impact of your brand protection efforts with our customizable data reports.
If you’re worried about the recent rise of ChatGPT scams and the potential threats to your business you can rely on Red Points’ real-time protection to safeguard your IP and your customers.
Scammers have been empowered by the release of ChatGPT. With a sophisticated and fast AI platform to lean on, bad actors have been devising new and deceptive ways to scam businesses and their customers.
To combat the efforts of these scammers you have to be proactive and stay informed about the progress of new tools such as ChatGPT and other AI used to build digital scams. You also have to invest in technology and expertise geared towards protecting your brand and recovering your revenue.
Using Red Points’ Brand Impersonation Protection software is one of the best ways you can take down fake accounts, apps, sites, and domains that have been created using ChatGPT. Red Points’ solution will help you detect, validate and remove malicious infringers and secure your brand from ChatGPT fraudsters. To learn more about how Red Points can help you combat ChatGPT scams, request a demo here.
ChatGPT is a Natural Language Processing (NLP) tool powered by AI technology. It allows users…
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an innovation that has existed for many years. However, only now…
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly becoming a tool of mischief and destruction in the hands…