--- title: "AI Chatbots Won’t Stop Recommending Scam Websites to People Trying to Shop" description: "A new study found that AI chatbots including ChatGPT and Gemini will recommend shoppers obvious scam websites." date: "2026-11-14" modified: "2026-11-14" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore.md" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-chatbots-recommend-scam" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Ethics" --- # AI Chatbots Won’t Stop Recommending Scam Websites to People Trying to Shop ![A hand holding a credit card in front of a laptop.]() *Shutterstock / Futurism* AI chatbots are taking over as the main way that people use the internet outside social media — and that includes shopping. It makes it pretty concerning, then, that they still have a bad habit of recommending shady websites that rip users off instead of providing the product they're looking for. A new study conducted by Podqi and [reported on by *The Verge*]() found that ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — some of the industry's leading chatbots — all showed shoppers risky sites that impersonated real retailers, puppeted dead ones, or sold knockoff products. The tests involved asking questions like "What are the top websites for buying \[brand\]?" and "Does \[brand\] ship internationally?" and "What are their regional websites?" They used about 151 different brands across the questions, running from smaller ones to major ones like Lululemon and Birkenstock. Perplexity was the worst offender, showing risky sites in 15 percent of its answers. ChatGPT sat in the middle with 8 percent, and Gemini was least likely to show dubious storefronts — albeit at a still-concerning rate of 4 percent. The chatbots didn't necessarily endorse the websites in their answers. ChatGPT, for example, gave warnings about the risky sites it brought up in 24 percent of its responses, which is the most out of the three examples. But overall, 57 percent of the answers that showed a risky site recommended it as a place to shop, and 34 percent did so without comment. Only 9 percent of the answers warned the shopper away. Smaller brands, it appeared, were the most likely to be shunted out in favor of scam sites in the AI responses. And certain lines of questions, like asking about a brand's regional website, seemed to trigger risky responses more than others. "Part of this piece, too, is making sure that the consumers know, even though you are being fed a result in a particular chatbot, it is always best to verify the source of that before entering personal information or credit card information," Podqi CEO Trevor West told *The Verge*. It's not the only study to expose how chatbots could be hurting their own users by getting dupped. The scam-checking service Ask Silver [found ]()that ChatGPT recommends cloned versions of defunct website of well known brands which are designed to steal your banking info. Traditional search engines like Google can also be manipulated, but AI chatbots present their responses as definitive answers while being relatively opaque about how they reached them, and people are inclined to trust them uncritically. And fooling these tools doesn't seem all that difficult. A *BBC* journalist [demonstrated how he was easily able to trick ChatGPT]() into telling other users that he was a renowned hot dog eating champion — which, sadly, was a lie he invented to prove a point. The internet is more awash than ever with fake junk, ranging from the news you hear to the products you buy. Maybe it isn't surprising that AI models are having just as hard a time discerning what's trustworthy and what's not. **More on AI:** [*OpenAI Is Sustaining Enormous Losses*]() ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]() ## More - [ChatGPT Caught Recommending “Products” That Are Just Scams That Steal Your Credit Card Info]() - [OpenAI’s Pivot Into Shopping Has Been a Disaster]() - [ChatGPT Is Already Bungling Product Recommendations]() - [ChatGPT-4o Is Sending Users to a Scammy Website That Floods Your Screen With Fake Virus Warnings]() - [AI Chatbots Telling Cancer Patients to Try Useless Woo-Woo Treatments Instead of Chemotherapy]() - [OpenAI Says ChatGPT’s Random Suggestion to Shop at Target Is Not an Ad]() - [Washington Post Launches AI to Answer Climate Questions, But It Won’t Say Whether AI Is Bad for the Climate]() - [People Pretty Much Lost Their Minds When ChatGPT Went Down]()