ChatGPT Routes Tech-Support Pleas to 404 Media's Reporters
TL;DR
- 404 Media says ChatGPT has spent about two weeks funneling users with banned Instagram accounts and routine tech issues to its reporters, often drafting the email itself.
- One Russian sender told 404 Media he had lost '13 years of personal photos, videos and memories' after Instagram banned him, with ChatGPT framing it as worth contacting journalists.
- Jason Koebler attributes the pattern to big-tech platforms lacking accessible customer support, pushing frustrated users to chatbots that invent a human recipient.
ChatGPT is routing people with locked Instagram accounts and other routine tech problems to 404 Media, and in many cases drafting the email for them. 404 Media's Jason Koebler wrote on Oct. 26 that the inbox has been filling with AI-generated pleas for roughly two weeks.
One Russian sender told the outlet, 'I have now lost access to 13 years of personal photos, videos and memories,' after his Instagram account was banned. He said ChatGPT drafted the outreach. The chatbot's text framed an ordinary account suspension in the register of an investigation: 'You have lost access not merely to a social media profile, but potentially to years of personal photographs, videos, conversations, and memories. I think contacting journalists is worth considering.'
Koebler's own read is blunter. 'Because big tech platforms essentially do not have customer support and make it impossible for their users to contact a human, many people experiencing run-of-the-mill tech problems have turned to ChatGPT,' he writes. 'And, increasingly, ChatGPT is telling people that have normal tech support problems that they have discovered something journalistically notable and that 404 Media, specifically, can help them.'
It reads as a soft hallucination case: no fabricated citation, no sign error, just a chatbot inventing a human on the other end of a complaint.
Shared on Bluesky by 9 AI experts (top 5 by trust)
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ChatGPT keeps telling people 404 Media can solve their tech support problems — tech journalists are regularly getting spammed by meat proxies
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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social
In the last few weeks i've been bombarded with emails from people who have minor tech support problems. ChatGPT is telling them to email me, writing their emails, and compiling "evidence packets" after convincing them th…
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ChatGPT keeps telling people all over the world that 404 Media can help with their tech support problems, and our inboxes are full of clearly AI-generated complaints about getting locked out of Instagram accounts. Make …
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Originally reported by 404media.co
Read the original article →Original headline: ChatGPT Keeps Routing Tech-Support Askers to 404 Media Journalists, Drafts the Emails Itself