Fraudsters are taking advantage of the popularity of OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, by creating apps representing the chatbot to defraud people.
While the AI tool is currently available only on the web and is free, several apps claiming to be ChatGPT have flooded the Google Play Store and Apple iOS Store and are charging for a subscription.
In the beta version of ChatGPT, available since November 30, 2022, users do not need to pay any fee or subscription. Users are only required to just create an account with a Google or Microsoft email. However, one of the fake apps on the Apple Store is charging users $7.99 dollars subscription fee and has recorded several downloads.
On the Google Play Store, a search for ChatGPT produces results of over 10 apps and most of them have recorded over 100,000 downloads each. Apple and Google are yet to take action on these apps as of publication time.
The real ChatGPT: ChatGPT is an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, a research firm based in San Francisco. It is a language learning model compatible with both supervised and reinforcement machine learning techniques. Unlike most other chatbots, ChatGPT relies on a vast and complex learning model. It can understand your messages’ meaning and context and generate human-like responses.
Since its debut in December last year, people have been using it to compose music, understand complex topics, make jokes, write movie scripts, and even debug computer codes. Its popularity soared within days as it recorded first 1 million users in 5 days of its launch.
How to use it: To use ChatGPT, go to the OpenAI website and click on the Try ChatGPT button. You will find the Try option toward the top of the website interface.
- Next, you will be asked to log in or sign up. If you do not already have an OpenAI account, sign up using your email address. You may also have to share your mobile number before you’re let in.
- Once you’re in, you will be greeted with a few standard disclaimers. These include a notice that AI trainers may review your interaction with ChatGPT to evaluate the system’s performance. You might want to skim these disclaimers for a general overview of what to expect.
- Now, you can start interacting with ChatGPT. Find the message box toward the bottom of the interface to begin a conversation.