They are called Chat AI, AI Chatbot Assistant, Open Chat AI Chatbot Assistant, Chatbot IA Français, or ChatBox: AI Chat Bot Assistant. All these applications are based on conversational robots of the ChatGPT type, the free version of which is accessible in all browsers. They have multiplied in recent weeks, at the risk of misleading Internet users.
These generative AI clones of Open AI are free to download from the App Store and Play Store at first. But then users are incentivized to pay to use them beyond the free trial or see fewer ads.
Some chatbots go so far as to offer a free trial that people often forget to cancel before it converts to a paid subscription, notes Wired.
The “fleeceware”, a scam on the rise
It’s called “fleeceware,” a type of rogue mobile app that involves hidden and often extortionate subscription fees. The term comes from the combination of the English verb “to fleece”, literally “to strip”, “to swindle”, and “ware”, which designates software.
“I’ve seen a lot of ads for these kinds of apps on social media platforms where it’s cheap to advertise and sometimes they use tactics like intentional typos in the name, calling the app ‘ChatGBT’ or whatever, to dismiss to people — who are a little bit more conversant with new technologies,” Sean Gallagher, a threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Sophos, said in an interview with Wired.
“I was scammed”
On the French side, similar chatbots sometimes rank high in the number of downloads and some receive negative reviews, without necessarily being “fleeceware”. Please note that Google and Apple receive a percentage of the payments made by users of the applications available in their store.
“I uninstalled after too short a test because I have to take out my credit card [carte bleue] very quickly,” testifies a disappointed netizen. “As soon as you open the app, it offers to bookmark it in the Play Store and sign up for a subscription. A simple question, 5 minutes of reflection to finally answer ‘Sorry, the servers are busy’ [‘Désolée les serveurs sont occupés’]“, reproaches another about the same application.
Others complain of false advertising.
Accusations that are difficult to prove to the extent that those responsible for these tools can change their conditions of use and their parameters without the store following them up. For its part, OpenAI has finally released a (real) ChatGPT mobile app, but only available on iOS and in the US.
Source: BFM TV
