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Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) unit Google alleged in a lawsuit that some scammers are exploiting consumer interest in artificial-intelligence tools to steal social-media-account passwords of U.S. small businesses, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The suit, which was filed on Monday, is aimed at unnamed individuals in India and Vietnam. Google said the hackers have been tricking small-business owners into clicking on Facebook ads which offer to download Google’s AI chatbot Bard. When people do, the ads hit them with malware which steals their social-media credentials, the report added.
After the hackers get the social-media credentials they use the data to take over their victims’ social-media accounts and spread additional malware-linked ads, as per the lawsuit, which was filed in federal district court in northern California.
Google noted that the ads are false: Bard is a free web-based platform and is not available via download. Posting the official-looking ads is an organized group of hackers operating via accounts and pages with phony names such as Google AI, AIGoogle.Plus, AIGoogle Bard FB and AIGoogleBard.
The lawsuit, which seeks to enjoin the scam and secure damages, is believed to be the first such lawsuit aimed at protecting users of a major technology company’s main AI product, said Halimah DeLaine Prado, Google’s general counsel, in an interview, according to the report.
Google noted that the intended victims include small businesses with Facebook business or advertiser accounts. The malware-linked ads aim to to confuse Facebook users because Google itself has advertised Bard on Facebook, a unit of Meta Platforms (META), as per the lawsuit.
The precise number of victims of the alleged scam was not known. However, Google officials note that have filed around 300 takedown requests to have the ads removed. Facebook and others have generally been cooperative on takedown requests, as per Google.
The alleged scheme seems to be related to several malware scams aimed at businesses which Meta had flagged in newsroom posts. In May said that it blocked over 1,000 malicious URLs offering ChatGPT-based tools from being shared on its platforms. Many of the attacks had originated in Vietnam, according to Meta, the report noted.
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