Three Impostor Facebook (FB) pages are advertising software applications allegedly powered by Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) that could optimize ad and marketing campaigns, provide customer service, and create content. These are fake, yet many Filipinos are sharing the ads.
Results from the online antivirus service VirusTotal show that the two fake apps contain Trojan viruses.
Five posts created by the imposter FB pages featured two websites claiming that the fake applications use Google’s AI chatbot called Bard. Google AI is a division of Google dedicated to AI experimentation.
Similar to ChatGPT, Bard only generates text, scripts, and programming code based on prompts. It does not help with social media marketing or customer service as falsely claimed.
Google has yet to respond to VERA Files Fact Check’s request for comment.
The two fake websites are hosted on Google Sites, a web page creator tool under the Google Docs Editors Suite. Its domain (sites.google.com) is not the same as the official domains used by Google AI (ai.google) or Bard (bard.google.com).
VERA Files Fact Check identified a total of five FB posts from Sept. 20 to 25. These posts came from FB pages Google.Ai (created on Jan. 10, 2018 under the same name), GoogleAi (created on March 14, 2019 under the name MIST – CTIS Department), and AiGoogle (created on Oct. 20, 2013 under the name Kazuka Cafe & Lounge).
The fake ads appeared the same day Google announced that its Bard chatbot can now interact with a user’s Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Drive, among others.
About a month ago, a similar fake tool allegedly launched by Meta was promoted by a bogus Facebook page. (Read: FB post promotes FAKE Meta ad campaign optimization tool)
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
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