Some developers are trying to make money off the brouhaha surrounding OpenAI’s artificial intelligence tool, ChatGPT, by sneaking their own dubious apps into app stores.
Both Apple’s App store and Google Play’s store are flooded with sketchy ChatGPT apps, TechCrunch reported. These apps seemed to be advertising “pro” versions of ChatGPT, as well as selling “extra credits” to supposedly enable users to leverage the AI tool.
However, the fact is that ChatGPT is free for all to use on the web, and OpenAI has not released a mobile app, nor does it have an official ChatGPT API (application programming interface).
An app named “ChatGPT Chat GPT AI With GPT-3” managed to reach the top of the charts in the productivity category in multiple countries, MacRumors reported. Now pulled from the App Store, the app offered weekly (US$7.99) and monthly (US$49.99) plans to have unlimited chats with the AI bots. Reviews suggested that the app appeared to be fake, the subscription does not add any value, and it often provided generic or inaccurate responses.
As of now, several other apps referencing ChatGPT in their name or description remain on App Store and Google Play Store.
By including ChatGPT in their names or descriptions, developers are aiming to appear favorably in search results, while boosting their own ratings. Some are even developing several similarly-named apps in hopes that one will catch users’ attention, TechCrunch reported.
It is unclear whether Google and Apple are taking any active action against these apps, other than taking down the flagged ones, given clones of popular apps are very common.