Whether you love them or hate them, AI chatbots have definitely changed our lives.
They've made daily mundane tasks like email replies much easier, helped students structure their essays (though not always in good ways!), and can be really fun when you get creative with them.
However, some use the AI tools to a dishonest degree to scam businesses and get free meals. Like this one guy who used OpenAI's ChatGPT tool to get himself unlimited free Maccies.
Gage, a self-proclaimed 'millionaire' businessman boasted on a podcast that he's used ChatGPT to scam McDonald’s into giving him free meals.
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He explained that he 'steals receipts from tills or tables' and uses their unique code to fill in the McDonald's feedback survey, using AI to generate fake complaints.
So far, the 22-year-old has received over 100 free meals in just nine months.
Gage, who also co-hosts All Things The Podcast, described: 'If you just put you’re highly dissatisfied with every single answer and then use ChatGPT — you just type in something like, ‘Write about a time that I had a horrible experience at McDonald’s where I ordered a Big Mac and make it under 1,200 characters.''
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'Copy that, you paste in … it’s usually really bad. And if it’s not bad enough, you might type, ‘Make it worse.' You punch that in, fill in an email, boom. In, like, 12 hours, a representative will send you an email with one, two, or three or four meal vouchers completely for free.'
As much as the entrepreneur thinks what he's doing 'isn't harming anyone', it's certainly affecting his local McDonald's branch.
He shared that his local Maccies 'knows him' and won’t give him a receipt for anything.
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The amass of bad reviews from Gage has resulted in the franchise taking action. 'They’ve plastered posters up everywhere saying, ‘Please fill in the survey and put highly satisfied,'' Gage said.
Furthermore, viewers of the podcast weren't impressed with Gage's actions or inconsiderate attitude.
''It doesn’t harm anyone.’ It will when McDonald’s shut down that branch because it’s had thousands of bad reviews because someone is too cheap to buy a 99p burger,' one viewer wrote.
Another person argued: 'It does harm people, though. McDonald’s obviously target their franchisees and if customer satisfaction drops below a certain threshold then they risk losing the franchise.'
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The Amazon seller uses his social media platform to regularly boast about his business performance and monthly earnings.