Ella Scott
Food delivery drivers are adopting AI in an unexpected way - and in this case it's not particularly positive.
Global date insights claim that one billion people now use standalone AI, while 55 percent of Americans claimed to utilise tools on a regular basis, as per Pew Research.
While some people use it to come up with ingenious recipes, get ahead on their fitness goals, and budget for groceries, other people are apparently using AI for more sworded purposes.
In December, Texas-based writer Bryne Hobart claimed he’d been a victim of an AI scam.
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According to a now-viral X post, he ordered some food via DoorDash, and noticed a delivery driver decided to ‘accept’ the order.
“Amazing. DoorDash driver accepted the drive, immediately marked it as delivered, and submitted an AI-generated image of a DoorDash order (left) at our front door (right),” he wrote.
Hobart included two images with the post: one of his real front door, and a fake image that does look a little bit like the real thing.
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The DoorDash customer said that despite his first order being ‘stolen’, he did eventually get the poké bowl he’d bought, and soon accused the driver of going through ‘a lot of effort for free food’.
Weirdly, Hobart isn’t then only person in the Austin area to fall victim to a AI DoorDash scam.
“Had the same thing happen last night in Austin. The feeling was really uncanny, like playing a video game with a glitch,” typed a second X user.
The pair then concluded that the Dasher that hit them with the AI-generated doors was called 'Matthew'.
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According to a report by McAfee, one in four survey respondents had encountered an AI-generated scam, remarking that deepfake incidents and synthetic identity fraud was on the rise.
DoorDash has since issued a statement on the allegations, confirming that Hobart was telling the truth regarding the thievery.
A representative of the company told TechCrunch that the so-called ‘Matthew’ had been banned from the platform.
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“Our team permanently removed the Dasher's account and ensured the customer was made whole,” the spokesperson said.
"We have zero tolerance for fraud and use a combination of technology and human review to detect and prevent bad actors from abusing our platform."
So, how did the faux DoorDasher pull off the hack?
Well, it hasn’t exactly been revealed, but Hobart had a hunch.
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He claimed via X that perhaps the thief had used a hacked account on a jailbroken phone and obtained an image of his front door by accessing photos from prior deliveries.
“I think the nature of the scam is that you get a hacked account, make sure it's not very active (so the user won't notice and take it back), change the debit card it gets paid out to, wait a week (DoorDash requires this), then do a bunch of fake deliveries and do instant cashout,” he mused.
“Incidentally, this meant that when DoorDash sent a replacement driver, the meal was already prepared, which is why it got to me within the original delivery window.”