For a long time, many developers and Apple users have complained that after downloading the App from the App Store, they only provide limited functions, and then charge high prices, intending to defraud people of their money. And everyone knows that the recent craze is believed to be AI, or ChatGPT, but some unscrupulous developers have put a lot of apps that imitate OpenAI/ChatGPT, these apps are almost identical, and the purpose is to confuse consumers , to the exclusion of other developers. And this article will dig into the problems of these apps and teach you how to avoid falling into the scam trap.
With a plethora of ChatGPT apps flooding the Mac App Store, Privacy 1st developer Alex Kleber spent the weekend digging into the Mac App Store and sharing his findings on his Medium platform. A search for OpenAI or ChatGPT on the Mac App Store turns up a long list of apps that provide most of the same functionality, and Kleber found that some developers have used keywords, misleading marketing tactics, fake reviews, pretending to be OpenAI Logos, and so on. Store play to Taitai turn.
Among these apps, it is not uncommon to come across several apps with the same name and logo claiming to offer advanced AI chatbots or language models, but most of these apps are cheap knockoffs or obvious scams that fail to deliver promise. These scams not only deceive users, but also damage the reputation of legitimate developers and hinder the development of the macOS platform application ecosystem.
For example, two apps, Pixelsbay and ParallelWorld, both come from the same parent company, and 99% of the code is the same. They have the same interface and the same payment function, and there is no way to exit the payment function pop-up window, causing users to need to exit the application and restart it, causing confusion. All of these ChatGPT apps take advantage of the popularity of chatbots, charge relatively high prices, and bring handsome profits to these unscrupulous developers.
On the Internet, ChatGPT is free to use, except that Hong Kong users may need to spend a little money to purchase services such as VPN and foreign phone numbers. And OpenAI offers a “Plus” plan for $20 per month for faster speeds and priority access to new features. The Microsoft Bing chatbot based on OpenAI is also free to use, and Google Bard is free, but requires a VPN.
With mostly obscure names in the iOS and macOS App Store, these so-called ChatGPT apps are scam apps that shouldn’t be paid for, and many of them don’t even do what they promise. Most of these apps have a weekly subscription fee, so if you see one asking you to subscribe, be wary of falling for it.
Kleber called on Apple to take a tougher stance against such fraudulent apps to prevent users from losing money to unscrupulous developers.His full Medium article goes into more depth about which apps to watch out for.
Source: MacRumors | Medium