OpenAI’s sensational chatbot service ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. This explosion of interest has translated into a proliferation of new apps that trick users with savvy ads before rug-pulling them. In the latest development, a ChatGPT-style Web3 firm BlockGPT has been confirmed to have carried out a rug pull, stealing $256,000 in pre-sale funds.

Bloomberg has now come under fire for lack of a proper disclaimer after a paid press release of the scam project made it to its website.

BlockGPT Scam

The blockchain security firm CertiK confirmed that the recently launched Web3 company – BlockGPT – is a scam. The rug pull claims were further validated by PeckShield, which revealed that over 800 BNB raised in a presale contract have been deposited into Tornado Cash.

Earlier this month, BlockGPT pushed out a press release outlining its vision to create a ChatGPT-style artificial intelligence system on the blockchain. Unfortunately, the press release, which was originally delivered via Globenewswire, was then auto-scraped into Bloomberg.

It is important to note that the article published on Bloomberg had very few signs that could have helped readers identify it as a paid press release and not news. In fact, the press release on the website had no clear disclaimer or “Paid” content mark. Flagging the mishap, Blockfence, a security aggregation provider, tweeted,

“FYI Bloomberg and Bloomberg Crypto, your readers deserve a bigger disclaimer, and maybe even a little DD from your side, in order to prevent future publications of pure scam projects.”

Meanwhile, there are two tokens associated with the project. One is BlockGPT’s governance token – BGPT – which aimed to incentivize individuals who provide helpful questions and data. The other is a token for community-based governance – AIBGPT- that was created by BlockGPT AI using the Solidity contract and introduced on the Binance Smart Chain network.

Multiple reports have surfaced suggesting that the latter is unsellable/honeypot.

Dark Side of ChatGPT’s Popularity

OpenAI’s ChatGPT has stoked investor interest in generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology. As the chatbot positioned itself as one of the fastest-growing consumer applications in history, the dark side of its popularity has come in the form of a flurry of scammers looking to benefit from using wording and domain names that appear related to the site.

According to a recent investigation, Unit 42 researchers observed a 910% increase in monthly registrations for domains related to ChatGPT between November 2022 through early April 2023.

During the same period, they also noted a 7,818% growth of related squatting domains from DNS Security logs. What’s even more alarming was the surge to 118 daily detections of ChatGPT-related malicious URLs captured from the traffic seen in its Advanced URL Filtering system.