ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence capable of generating written content. Its aim: to help you in your day-to-day work and with (almost) all your queries. Looking for a detailed recipe for a chocolate cake or a dish you’ve never tried before? It’s right up its street. He can also give you advice on subjects as varied as make-up, finance, relationships, fashion and much more.
Programmers will be able to use AI to write code in programming languages such as C++ Java or Python, while it has been possible to generate images since version 4 released by OpenAI using DALL-E. The possibilities are rich and limited only by your imagination. Of course, even if the quality of the answers is there, it’s always better to do a little checking, as the tool is no substitute for a human being.
However, of all the functions we could have imagined, paying for McDonald’s was clearly not on the agenda. And yet that’s what the AI has managed to do, and quite simply too. Because, yes, artificial intelligences are not capable of predicting the outcome of their actions, so they can also simplify fraud. It’s easy to use it to fill in assignments, files and other exams for you, but also to impersonate others.
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A simple process
It took a bit of creativity for a young British man to find a way to eat for free at his local McDonald’s, but ChatGPT made it child’s play. To be exact: a single prompt and a few simple steps were enough to offer a hundred meals!
It all works thanks to the questionnaires on the order receipts issued by McDonald’s. These receipts contain a unique code that opens a customer experience satisfaction survey. While most people ignored them, our young man used them all for his scheme, which consisted simply of complaining via ChatGPT. All he had to do was ask the AI to write a text recounting a horrible experience when ordering a sandwich in less than 12,000 characters and that was it.
One copy and paste later, dozens of reviews indicating a very bad experience could be sent to the restaurant, which would then contact them to offer them one (or more) vouchers as compensation, giving them access to free meals. What if the review written by ChatGPT wasn’t good enough? A quick rewrite was all it took.
It took almost a year before his case finally alerted the Mcdonald’s near him. No more question of him getting a single free voucher! Posters urging customers to post positive reviews were also put up in the McDonald’s, probably in an attempt to boost the restaurant’s rating, which must have been extremely low because of the scheme, which he has since explained in a podcast he hosts.
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