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. Trustpilot removed 2.7m fake reviews in 2021.

Source: The Guardian July 17, 2023 15:31 UTC