Artificial intelligence is advancing by leaps and bounds every day. Whether it is for creating images, videos, texts or even summarising our emails, AI has brought with it various tools that we can use in our daily activities. Even for eating for free at McDonald’s.
Today, chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT can help us break down a recipe, financial advice, and even gym routines. But one young Brit decided to go one step further and use ChatGPT in an unexpected—and ingenious—way: scam the fast food chain.
As he talked about on All Things The Podcast , young entrepreneur Gage revealed his Machiavellian but agile strategy for eating without spending a single cent. First of all, if you have ever eaten in this type of establishment, you will remember that there is a QR code on the receipt. There is the answer.
Through this code, the company sends you a satisfaction survey. In this way, the boy not only left a review, but made several complaints with more than 1,200 characters of bad experiences. This is where AI intervened. Each fake story was made through the chatbot to complain about the food or the service.
“You have to mark ‘very dissatisfied’ on their survey. Then, use ChatGPT to write a fake complaint. Write something like, ‘I once had a horrible experience at McDonald’s, where I ordered a Big Mac. And make it less than 1,200 characters.’ Copy it. Paste it. It’s usually really bad.”
After collecting various receipts from other customers, because the objective was obviously not to spend, he sent out various surveys using this same technique. With this type of criticism, he stated that McDonald’s rewarded him with several free food coupons. He even received up to four for completing a single survey.
“The local McDonald’s knew me. They didn’t want to give me a receipt for anything.”
Yes, we can question how ethical or moral this kind of exploitation can be. However, we can also take into account that being a multi-billion dollar global company, it’s not really like they are ripping them off until they are left with crumbs. The only thing we can give them credit for is the ingenuity and patience to do this over and over again.