Fake reviews: can we trust what we read online as use of AI explodes?
Artificial intelligence produces plausible verdicts on hotels, restaurants and tech in an instant
The four-star hotel in Kraków in Poland, the review says, is “excellent”, a “short walk from the main square” and boasts a “first-rate” spa and fitness centre. A less positive review describes it as “small, cramped and outdated” with “lumpy” pillows. But then a family who stayed said they were made to feel “instantly welcome”.
The four-star hotel in Kraków in Poland, the review says, is “excellent”, a “short walk from the main square” and boasts a “first-rate” spa and fitness centre. A less positive review describes it as “small, cramped and outdated” with “lumpy” pillows. But then a family who stayed said they were made to feel “instantly welcome”.
The truth is that none of those reviews are real. They were generated in seconds by the free-to-use artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT. These “visitors” definitely didn’t stay at the hotel, as they don’t exist.
Fake online reviews have long existed and are often not difficult to spot: tortured and mangled English, and excessive praise mixed with blandness to hide the fact the “reviewer” has been nowhere near the actual hotel or restaurant.
AI is turning that upside down – generating fake reviews that are increasingly more difficult to distinguish from those written by the average traveller or restaurant-goer. Indeed, one sign that a review is fake will be that the sentence structure is a bit too perfect.
Until now, the fake review business has been largely centred on online sweatshops, where people are paid to write multiple posts to boost a business’s rating.
Tripadvisor identified 1.3m reviews as fake in 2022. Trustpilot removed 2.7m fake reviews in 2021.