ALERT: Scammers Reportedly Flood Apple's App Store With Fake ChatGPT Apps

Apple Inc.’s AAPL Mac App Store is reportedly flooded with bogus chatGPT apps, tricking users into subscribing to expensive services. 

What Happened: Alex Kleber’s report on the “Dark Side of the Mac App Store” exposes the outcome of a month long investigation on a cluster of applications purporting to offer OpenAI’s chatGPT-like services. 

These apps can be found by searching with terms like “OpenAI” and “ChatGPT” and use almost identical names, logos and icons as the Sam Altman-led company, leading users to believe they are authentic when in fact, they have no connection with it.

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“In the midst of the OpenAI frenzy, several apps have surfaced that are copying the iconic OpenAI logo and color scheme in order to mislead unsuspecting MacOS App Store users,” writes Kleber. “Most of these apps are nothing but cheap imitations or outright scams that fail to deliver on their promises.”

Apple did not immediately respond to Benzinga’s request for comments. 

The popularity of OpenAI’s chatGPT is exceptionally high as of now considering the platform signed up its 100 millionth user in just 64 days after its Nov. 30, 2022, launch. 

Its popularity led to Alphabet Inc’s GOOG GOOGL Google declaring “code red” and launching Bard, a language model for dialogue applications, whereas Microsoft Corporation MSFT launched a new version of Bing, powered by the same technology behind chatGPT. 

Why It’s Important: Earlier this month, it was reported that Baidu Inc. BIDU, the Chinese search engine giant, filed a lawsuit against Apple and “relevant” app developers for distributing counterfeit versions of its “Ernie Bot” app on the App Store. 

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