TLDR: There’s been a recent uprising of apps that are a repackaging of OpenAI GPT models. Using these over the first party service may have additional privacy concerns.

I was watching YouTube recently and saw a sponsorship for an app called ‘Ask Brain 2’. Curious to what this was, I followed the affiliate link and found an incomplete (somewhat shady) website about their app. It’s sold in tiers, with a free tier that offers everything a free ChatGPT account offers.

A screenshot of their FAQ page, where every question is "How do we use" and the answer is "We can use it"

After reading their privacy policy (where some placeholder values hadn’t been replaced), I’ve come to the conclusion that this is just a repackaging of ChatGPT where instead of paying OpenAI, you’re paying a Dubai based company to pay OpenAI. In other words, where one corporation could be spying on you before, now there are two.

Other apps like this include “CHAT AI: TALK TO CHAT GTP” (yes, they made that typo) and “Ask AI – Chat with Chatbot”. This is just from a quick search of the Google Play Store. Please please please don’t use these apps. Just sign up for a first party ChatGPT account at https://chat.openai.com. Or even better, use an open source alternative such as HuggingChat. This is part of a bigger problem, where mobile app stores are filled with malware and imitation apps. Please make sure you know what you are downloading.