This 'millionaire' businessman used ChatGPT to scam McDonald's into giving him 100 free meals

Gage's hack didn't impress netizens at all and they criticised him. (Image: All Things Amazon/YouTube)

It is safe to say that the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools is both a boon and a bane. Lives have been made easier but there’s a downside to practically everything. Several people have been misusing it as well. Case in point, a “millionaire” businessman using ChatGPT to score free meals at McDonald’s.

Gage, the co-host of "All Things The Podcast", bragged that he has been ChatGPT to scam McDonald’s into giving him free meals. According to a report by the New York Post, he used the tool to generate fake complaints.

He “steals receipts from tills or tables” and used their unique code to open up a McDonald’s feedback survey. “If you just put you’re highly dissatisfied with every single answer and then use ChatGPT — you just type in something like, ‘Write about a time that I had a horrible experience at McDonald’s where I ordered a Big Mac and make it under 1,200 characters,” the 22-year-old said.

“Copy that, you paste in…it’s usually really bad. And if it’s not bad enough, you might type, ‘Make it worse.’ You punch that in, fill in an email, boom. In, like, 12 hours, a representative will send you an email with one, two, or three or four meal vouchers completely for free,” he added.

He claimed that he has tricked the fast-food giant into giving him 100 vouchers in just nine months. “It tastes better when it’s free,” he continued.

Gage admitted to doing this since the start of 2023. He also shared that his local McDonald’s “knows him” and won’t give a receipt for anything. “They’ve plastered posters up everywhere saying, ‘Please fill in the survey and put highly satisfied,'” Gage said.

When his co-host, Ben Wright, asked if it became the worst-rated McDonald’s in UK because of his “hack”, he said it doesn’t harm anyone.

“It doesn’t harm anyone. I’m not mentioning any names — it’s just purely to get the meal voucher,” he further said.

However, people were not very impressed by the hack and criticised Gage’s moves in the comments section.

"'It doesn't harm anyone'. It will when McDonald's shut down that branch because it's had thousands of bad reviews because someone it too cheap to buy a 99p burger," one user wrote.

Another user commented, "Someone supports their family with that job. You’re putting it at risk."

"It does harm people, though. McDonald's obviously target their franchisees and if customer satisfaction drops below a certain threshold then they risk losing the franchise," a third user remarked.

A fourth user added, "This guy is what is wrong with this generation! These poor minimum wage workers getting threats to be fired because of his fraudulent accounts."