AI-powered chatbots are making a significant impact in the world of technology, serving various purposes such as writing text, sharing information, problem-solving, and even assisting with programming tasks. However, many people have also been misusing it. Recently, a so-called millionaire businessman in the US claimed that he used ChatGPT to scam McDonald's into giving him 100 free meals, the New York Post reported.
Gage, the owner of the re-selling group All Things Arbitrage, bragged in a podcast that he stole receipts from tills and tables and used their unique codes to send McDonald's feedback.
"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," the 22-year-old said in the podcast.
"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," he added.
He claimed that he has been using this trick for nine months, and has received 100 vouchers so far, adding, "Food tastes better when it's free."
After many internet users criticised him for the hack, Gage said, "It doesn't harm anyone. I'm not mentioning any names - it's just purely to get the meal voucher."
People were still not impressed and expressed concern over the particular McDonald's outlet getting numerous negative reviews.
One user said, "It doesn't harm anyone.' It will when McDonald's shut down that branch. After all, it's had thousands of bad reviews because someone is too cheap to buy a 99p burger."
Another commented, "This guy is what is wrong with this generation! These poor minimum wage workers getting threats of being fired because of their fraudulent accounts."
A third added, "It does harm people, though. McDonald's obviously targets their franchisees and if customer satisfaction drops below a certain threshold then they risk losing the franchise."
