If it feels like you’ve been seeing more fishy ads lately (especially ones promising AI miracles that sound too good to be true) you’re not imagining things. The internet is buzzing with bold claims, from “automated fortune-building bots” to tools that supposedly do your marketing, taxes, and grocery shopping all in one click. And honestly, it’s getting hard to tell what’s real anymore.
The Problem: Most Claims Sound Legit
The trouble is, many of these pitches are dressed up in slick design and impressive-sounding language. Words like “machine learning,” “generative neural networks,” and “autonomous content pipelines” get thrown around like confetti, but under the hood, many of these products are either overhyped or downright fake.
For busy small business owners, who’s got time to dissect all that jargon?
Let’s take a real example that was dumped into our Facebook feed:
A Facebook ad from a company promises they can “Get You Indexed by ChatGPT” for just $30 a month. Sounds like a dream, right? Like SEO for AI?
Dig a little deeper though, and it unravels fast. In the comments, they admit that it’s not really “indexing” like Google does. Instead, they claim to “stream your URL into ChatGPT’s training data” by creating something called JSON-LD schema and “dynamic prompts.” They even say they’re “building a data pipeline into the model.”
That all sounds very technical… but here’s the truth: It’s pure techno-babble trash.
Large language models like ChatGPT are retrained every few months at best, and that process costs millions of dollars. No third party can “stream” anything into the training data or build a magical pipeline into the model. That’s simply not how any of this works.
They’re taking real-sounding concepts and wrapping them in snake oil, hoping business owners won’t know the difference.
Using AI to Decode AI Claims
Here’s the irony: one of the best tools for cutting through bogus AI claims… is AI itself.
If you’re staring at an ad that makes wild promises or a sales pitch that sounds a little too slick, you can now get a second opinion instantly by feeding it to an AI assistant like ChatGPT, Grok, or Gemini. Just upload a screenshot or explain what the ad said, and ask, “Is this for real?” You’ll get a breakdown that’s clear, honest, and (usually) way less biased than a sales call.
IMPORTANT: You have to be wary of “hallucinations” in these AI models. That means they’ll confidently lie to your face sometimes, inventing facts and sources out of thin air. If you treat the AI’s output like a Wikipedia article, you’re on the right track. It’s a powerful tool that can help you get started down a path, but it’s not to be blindly trusted.
PRO TIP: One neat trick is to use two models. For example, you can ask ChatGPT about a topic and then copy/paste the question you asked it, and the answer it gave, into Grok or Gemini. Just prompt it with something like “Below is a question I asked ChatGPT and the answer it gave me. Please review it and tell me if any of it is inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading.” You are unlikely to get the same hallucination in both models so you can be reasonably sure, at that point, that your information is pretty reliable.
A Shortcut to the Truth: ScamWatch GPT
Until you’ve used AI for a while and gotten used to how best to prompt it, it can be a little frustrating. You’ll get overly verbose answers and wandering responses that you have to read through. As you get better at it, you’ll get better outputs.
In order to help you get the most out of your queries (and to save you a bunch of time and keystrokes) we built this (totally free) custom GPT helper: ScamWatch GPT by Prospect Genius
It’s a custom GPT we created that saves you from having to type long prompts to get to the answers you need. Instead of typing out your whole situation or trying to figure out what to say, just drop in the ad (or describe the claim), and it’ll walk you through the red flags, sketchy logic, or flat-out lies… fast.
Think of it like a time-saver for checking too-good-to-be-true offers before you waste a dime or a minute on them.
For example, we uploaded the screenshot of that ad we referenced above into ScamWatch GPT and hit enter (no typing required.) This is what we got back.
In case you can’t see what’s at the link, here’s a screenshot of what’s there.
You’ve Got Backup
Whether you use our custom GPT, your own AI assistant, or reach out to us the old-fashioned way, we want you to have the tools to cut through the noise. AI is opening a lot of doors, but it’s also opening the floodgates to scammers, shady marketers, and half-baked tech products.
We’ve spent nearly two decades helping folks make sense of marketing pitches. Now, with AI in your corner, it’s easier than ever to get a second opinion before you sign up, subscribe, or spend.
Need a second opinion?
Upload that ad. Paste that pitch. Run it through an AI. Or just ask us. Either way, you’ve got options, and that makes you a much harder target for scams.
