Author says AI scams are increasingly common in ads and emails
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An author wrote on Hacker News that AI scams in YouTube ads and emails are becoming increasingly common and sophisticated, including tai chi courses with exaggerated claims, all-purpose glasses, and phishing emails that impersonate book reviews and are clearly generated by ChatGPT based on the author's own page content. The author believes platforms do almost no authenticity verification of ads, and scammers only need a very small number of people to fall for them to break even, so calls for greater vigilance and verification. The above judgments come from the author's personal observations and are not verified statistical conclusions.
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- Hacker News AIEverything is an AI scam now
The author describes a flood of implausible AI-generated product ads on YouTube and elsewhere, from fake prescription glasses to impossible air conditioners, noting that platforms do little to verify them. They also share a phishing email that used ChatGPT to produce a tailored pitch for their own free blackout poetry book, calling it a more sophisticated version of the Nigerian Prince scam. The post argues that scammers only need a small percentage of people to respond, and that constant verification is exhausting.
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