Comment by tagyro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tagyro | Hacker News Reader

Funnily enough I've been in contact with the Apple Support Team complaining about the scam "GPT" apps. Their reply, verbatim:

"We take reports of fraudulent behavior very seriously. Please provide the following so we can investigate the situation:

Steps to reproduce the behavior: Screenshots of the behavior on the iTunes Store or App Store: Names and links to the Apps:

After we receive this information, our team will investigate your concern."

Am I supposed to provide unpaid work for a $2 trillion company?

Also, worth mentioning the "tracking" of the "official" app:

The following data may be collected and linked to your identity: Contact Info Identifiers Diagnostics User Content Usage Data

Thanks, but no thanks!

Disclosure: I developed an iOS app that uses the OpenAI API, but somehow managed to not include any tracking.

AKME is free and doesn't include any tracking. The app supports a BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) model, as well as buying in-app tokens https://apps.apple.com/app/akme-ai-knowledge/id6446436196

Are they scam apps, though? If they use any GPT model or API they're real apps.

Just because OpenAI didn't make an app first doesn't mean they're the only ones that can create apps for interfacing with GPT networks.

Here is a thorough analysis by Alex Kleber - https://privacyis1st.medium.com/the-dark-side-of-the-mac-app...

Yes, there are multiple scam apps

I read the article, basically there are multiple duplicate apps that do the same thing but with slightly different UI from the same developer. These apps implement UX that violates Apple’s design guidelines. Surprisingly, the reviews are not fake just users are often asked to review the app. I fail to see the scam portion of it? The app seems to deliver what it promised using the GPT API.

These apps do "a bit" more than violate Apple's design guidelines.

For example, one of the apps from the article claims to use 'GPT-4' and they actually do call the OpenAI API, but use the GPT-3.5 model.

Another app that also claims to use GPT-4, actually uses a different (self-hosted?) LLM.

In my opinion, this is a scam - a fraudulent attempt to make a quick profit.

Your app won't save my API key. It accepts it, shows a checkmark, then the pop up just sits there with the checkmark. If I click elsewhere besides the pop-up, it goes away, but prefs say key missing, and popping that window again doesn't show checkmark.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention! I haven't been able to reproduce it, but I'm investigating the issue. I wrote you an email and would really appreciate your help.

FYSA: I had gotten the email and replied.

Followup -- It's fixed now.

Thank you again for your email and for bringing this to my attention!

And really (really!) happy it's fixed, especially since I still don't know what might have caused it (I haven't made any changes and there's been no app update since v1.1).

“ the scam "GPT" apps.”

Define scam

I replied to a comment above: here is an analysis by Alex Kleber https://privacyis1st.medium.com/the-dark-side-of-the-mac-app...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com