Rise of the ChatGPT impersonators

There’s a lot of fake ChatGPTs clamoring for your attention through Google sponsored search results and mobile ads. Said ads are mostly AI generated which pisses me off to no end knowing that they used DALL-E or Midjourney to generate slop to give them money.

I have no idea why OpenAI is not doing anything about this. Unless those things are using ChatGPT subscriptions and just passing it off as their own bot, they aren’t making money from the impersonators. Even if they were singularities of greed stuck in human shells, these people are still scammers who are stealing from people who could have otherwise bought ChatGPT Plus.

The only reason I would see is if these people are paying OpenAI, are fronts for OpenAI, or are in cahoots with OpenAI executives. Who can do something about this?

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The explanation is most likely a lot simpler and probably one of these:

  • These people use competitors to OpenAI.
  • These people use local LLMs
  • These people use the OpenAI API and have a way to circumvent their policies

As long as they are not breaking the law they can do whatever they want, whether you or anyone likes it or not, sadly.

From the perspective of an OpenAI competitor, OpenAI is the “annoying” one here.

If OpenAI had a problem or COULD do something against these sites, they would.

Cheers! :hugs:

EDIT:

Also, it’s probably good to not have 1 big source of AI out there. I would even encourage multiple options and other companies to try and achieve what OpenAI is achieving.
Monopoly. :thinking:

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Yeah, but everything about these apps is clearly meant to imitate ChatGPT, with names like “Chatbot App” and even straight up saying that they’re ChatGPT 4.0 in their ad. Even the logos are always some variant of “rounded with six circle-like parts”. Also, they’re not websites. They’re mobile apps.

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Although many use the ChatGPT API and other APIs, so aslong as they are Not branded as ChatGPT it’s fine. They are often 1rd the price for casual users and include many vendors not just openai models.
Infact the latest ChatGPT UI seems closer than ever to some OpenSource projects. So who is copying who, isn’t that clear anymore.