ChatGPT has been at the forefront of the conversations around AIs. Its popularity has a lot to do with how it provides easy solutions to users and developers. With its wide applications, it has attracted some developers with no-so-good intentions looking for ways to exploit it. It has resulted in developers making clone apps of it for a quick cash grab. They do so with the promise of a premium or pro version to get more answers from the AI.
The biggest wrench in this is that ChatGPT is free to use for anyone with access to the web. Also, OpenAI, the company responsible for ChatGPT hasn’t released any official mobile versions. There is no official version of ChatGPT API which begs to differ where the developers getting it from and whether is from ChatGPT.
In early reports, an app named “ChatGPT Chat GPT AI With GPT-3” managed to reach top spots in the productivity section in multiple countries but was taken down from the App Store after it was reported were made. This is small with many other still existing on both Play Store and App Store. Efforts have been made as some have been taken down after MacRumors reported.
The app was free but offered weekly packages of $7.99 and a monthly fee of $49.99 to provide unlimited access to the AI. Some reviews were the tell-signs that users should be careful with some saying subscription to the app comes with no added value. It is difficult to verify the app as it is buggy and I can’t get through the app phases to verify. There were a ton of apps from the same developer with one having over 100000 downloads which have been removed.
The trend of these apps has caught the eyes of social media with some tweets sounding caution that users should avoid the apps
Google Play Store has its fair share of these dubious ChatGPT apps that don’t offer any usable functionality.
To keep watch of these apps most come with the ChatGPT in their name to help boost their search results. Some developers have several versions of the app with different skins in the hope to have one that catches on. App clones are a trend that has existed on these platforms for some time now. A while ago there were clones of apps like Three, Flappy Bird, and Wordle on the Play Store and the App Store. It begs to question of what are measures Apple and Google have in place to check these trends. As of now, there has been no statement from both organization about the ChatGPT clones.
