It’s official. I can eat more hot dogs than any tech journalist on Earth. At least, that’s what ChatGPT and Google have been telling anyone who asks. I found a way to make AI tell you lies – and I’m not the only one.

Perhaps you’ve heard that AI chatbots make things up sometimes. That’s a problem. But there’s a new issue few people know about, one that could have serious consequences for your ability to find accurate information and even your safety. A growing number of people have figured out a trick to make AI tools tell you almost whatever they want. It’s so easy a child could do it.

As you read this, this ploy is manipulating what the world’s leading AIs say about topics as serious as health and personal finances. The biased information could mean people make bad decisions on just about anything – voting, which plumber you should hire, medical questions, you name it.

To demonstrate it, I pulled the dumbest stunt of my career to prove (I hope) a much more serious point:
 I made ChatGPT, Google’s AI search tools and Gemini tell users I’m really, really good at eating hot dogs. Below, I’ll explain how I did it, and with any luck, the tech giants will address this problem before someone gets hurt.

It turns out changing the answers AI tools give other people can be as easy as writing a single, well-crafted blog post almost anywhere online. The trick exploits weaknesses in the systems built into chatbots, and it’s harder to pull off in some cases, depending on the subject matter. But with a little effort, you can make the hack even more effective. I reviewed dozens of examples where AI tools are being coerced into promoting businesses and spreading misinformation. Data suggests it’s happening on a massive scale.

 

“It’s easy to trick AI chatbots, much easier than it was to trick Google two or three years ago,” says Lily Ray, vice president of search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy and research at Amsive, a marketing agency. “AI companies are moving faster than their ability to regulate the accuracy of the answers. I think it’s dangerous.”

A Google spokesperson says the AI built into the top of Google Search uses ranking systems that “keep results 99% spam-free”. Google says it is aware that people are trying to game its systems and it’s actively trying to address it. OpenAI also says it takes steps to disrupt and expose efforts to covertly influence its tools. Both companies also say they let users know that their tools “can make mistakes”.

But for now, the problem isn’t close to being solved. “They’re going full steam ahead to figure out how to wring a profit out of this stuff,” says Cooper Quintin, a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group. “There are countless ways to abuse this, scamming people, destroying somebody’s reputation, you could even trick people into physical harm.”

A ‘Renaissance’ for spam

When you talk to chatbots, you often get information that’s built into large language models, the underlying technology behind the AI. This is based on the data used to train the model. But some AI tools will search the internet when you ask for details they don’t have, though it isn’t always clear when they’re doing it. In those cases, experts say the AIs are more susceptible. That’s how I targeted my attack.