ChatGPT tells users with tech support problems to write to 404 Media
IA en un minuto newsroom · Editor: Jon Elgezabal
In 30 seconds
More and more people with a broken account or phone end up writing to 404 Media because ChatGPT advises them to. The tech outlet has received dozens of such messages, many drafted by the chatbot itself. They include a user in Russia locked out of Instagram and an Italian painter left without his Meta accounts.
ChatGPT, OpenAI's chatbot, is sending users whose only problem is a tech support one to the press. Tech outlet 404 Media reported it on Monday, October 26.
According to the outlet, over the last few months it has received dozens of tips that read as written with AI. Around two weeks ago it began replying to the senders to ask how they had come across it, and they all said the same thing: a chatbot advised them to write and, in many cases, drafted the email for them. 404 Media checked this in a handful of ChatGPT conversations that were sent to it.
One case is a man in Russia whose Instagram account had been shut down. After several replies about the social network's automated review, ChatGPT suggested he turn to journalists, gave him the email address of Jason Koebler, co-founder of 404 Media, and wrote in English the message he ended up sending. Another is an Italian painter who has lost his professional Meta accounts and who, when the outlet asked, answered that ChatGPT had suggested he get in touch. The outlet also heard from someone whose Verizon iPhone kept losing coverage, with several other newsrooms copied in.
The outlet explains that many people turn to ChatGPT because the big platforms barely offer customer service with real people, and that the chatbot frames ordinary problems as matters of journalistic interest. It recalls that New York Times reporter Kashmir Hill described something similar: chatbots telling users to write to her. The article does not include any response from OpenAI.
Why it matters · analysis and opinion
The big platforms have been removing people from their customer service, and the gap is now filled by a chatbot that cannot fix anything but does know whom to point at. The result is a detour: ordinary problems with an account or a phone line reach newsrooms as if they were investigations, in a dossier tone that gives them a weight they do not have. For the outlet it means sifting work; for the user, false expectations. What is missing is for OpenAI to explain why its assistant recommends specific journalists' names and addresses, and for companies to offer a real way to complain. Anyone managing business accounts on Instagram or Meta would do well to keep evidence and exhaust the official channels before trusting that suggestion.
Source: 404 Media · Written with the help of AI: how we make the news
