Study Finds AI Chatbots Direct Shoppers to Fake Retail Websites

A study conducted by IP protection firm Podqi tested three major AI chatbots—ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity—using shopping-related prompts for 151 brands. The research discovered that all three engines directed users to risky URLs, including fake websites, knockoffs, and abandoned domains, in varying percentages of their answers. Perplexity performed the worst in the study, displaying risky sites in 15 percent of its answers, followed by ChatGPT at 8 percent and Google's Gemini at 4 percent. Smaller brands were found to be at a higher risk of being impersonated compared to larger companies. This trend poses potential risks for consumers who rely on AI for holiday shopping or product research. Experts advise users to always verify the source of a website before entering personal or credit card information.