Scammers trick ChatGPT into recommending fake shopping sites

Scammers are creating convincing cloned websites of recently defunct but previously well‑known brands such as Russell and Bromley, taking advantage of the fact that customers still search for these names even after the companies have shut down. Ask Silver, a UK scam‑checking service that investigates suspicious online stores and warns consumers, reports that fraudsters may be poisoning AI training data by publishing large amounts of misleading content across the web. This malicious content is placed on cloned websites, fake blogs, autogenerated articles and SEO‑optimized pages that later get scraped into AI training datasets. As a result, these fake stores can appear as trusted sources in AI‑generated shopping recommendations, offering unrealistic discounts and harvesting payment details from unsuspecting buyers. Authorities warn that criminals are adapting quickly and that AI‑driven shopping tools must address these vulnerabilities before they escalate further.

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