AI shopping assistants are popping up all over the internet, changing how we browse, compare and discover products. However, these helpful tools appear to have a serious security flaw. According to a paper published on the arXiv preprint server, a single manipulated web page can trick an AI assistant into promoting a fake product to unsuspecting customers.

Considering that fake goods and fake reviews are everywhere online, researchers Minghao Luo and Liang Chen decided to test how easily search-augmented AI systems can be tricked into promoting bogus brands.