US Man’s ChatGPT Scheme Lands Him 100 Free McDonald’s Meals

AI-powered chatbots continue to make waves in technology, serving various purposes from writing text to solving problems. However, there’s a darker side to this innovation, as evidenced by a recent revelation reported by the New York Post. A US man, claiming to be a successful businessman, has allegedly used ChatGPT to pull off a scam, giving himself 100 free meals from McDonald’s.

In the podcast, Gage explained his scheme, explaining how he stole receipts from McDonald’s registers and tables to get unique codes for feedback surveys. By expressing dissatisfaction with fake experiences and using ChatGPT to create complaints under 1,200 characters, Gage claimed to have successfully obtained meal vouchers from McDonald’s representatives.

”Copy that, you paste in … it’s usually really bad. And if it’s not bad enough, you might type, ‘Make it worse. You punch that in, fill in an email, boom. In, like, 12 hours, a representative will send you an email with one, two, or three or four meal vouchers completely for free,” he added. 

“I’ve been doing this since the start of the year,” Gage admitted on the podcast, hinting at nearly nine months of pulling off this trick. He also mentioned that his local McDonald’s knew what he was up to, even suggesting they were in on it by urging customers to leave positive reviews.

Gage further said that “Food tastes better when it’s free,” suggesting his motivation behind the scam. His co-host, Ben Wright, quipped that the McDonald’s location in question must be the worst-rated in the UK, highlighting the consequences of Gage’s actions on the restaurant’s reputation.

After facing criticism from numerous internet users for his hack, Gage defended himself by stating, “It doesn’t harm anyone. I’m not mentioning any names — it’s just purely to get the meal voucher.”

However, Gage says that the nearby McDonald’s is now familiar with him and refuses to provide receipts for any purchases. He mentions that the restaurant has displayed posters encouraging customers to “fill in the survey and mark highly satisfied.” 

How Netizens reacted to this

One user commented, “‘It doesn’t harm anyone.’ It will when McDonald’s shut down that branch because it’s had thousands of bad reviews because someone is too cheap to buy a 99p burger.”

Another commented, “It does harm people, though. McDonald’s obviously target their franchisees and if customer satisfaction drops below a certain threshold then they risk losing the franchise.”

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