ChatGPT is nowadays a hot topic in tech industry discussions. OpenAI’s chatbot, which answers questions in natural languages, has drawn interest from developers and users. Developers are trying to profit from the trend by creating fake ChatGPT App on the App Store or Play Store.
ChatGPT can be used anywhere on the internet, and OpenAI has not released a ChatGPT app. Many apps use GPT-3, but there is no official ChatGPT API.
One of the app ‘ChatGPT Chat GPT AI With GPT-3’, a chat app, has reached the top of the productivity category charts in several countries.
The app is completely free, but it also offers monthly ($49.99) and weekly ($7.99), which allow unlimited chats with the AIbot. The app is not worth the money, and some reviews suggest it to be fake. It is impossible to determine if the app has tangible results as I could not get past the loading screen.
Notably, the developer had a similar app on the Play Store that was downloaded more than 100,000 times but has now been removed.
Bloomtech CEO Austen Allred tweeted over the weekend that many apps in the App Store don’t have any association with OpenAI and that they try to charge money for ChatGPT.
Google Play Store also contains a lot of sketchy ChatGPT apps, with thousands of downloads that offer no usable functionality.
These apps use ChatGPT as their app name. They also appear in search results favorably by improving their ratings. To grab users’ attention, some people are creating multiple apps with similar names.
It is unclear whether Apple or Google are taking active steps to address these apps. Either company did not comment on the story.
Cloning popular apps or websites is not a new trend for app developers. We have previously seen both Apple and Google’s app stores flooded with Wordle, Threes, and Flappy Bird clones. It is unclear how quickly and precisely these platform gatekeepers will respond to them.
Update: Many apps are removed from the App Store and Play Store. However, many other apps that reference “ChatGPT” in their names or descriptions are not yet removed.
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