Google Is Worried About ‘Fake Bard App’ Malware Scam And Users Have Been Warned

Google is no stranger to malware with millions of users affected by the issue on Android. But now the company is entering the new-age malware problem which involves its latest AI chatbot Bard. Most people know that Bard AI is not an app and cannot be downloaded. In fact, you don’t even need to pay to use Bard as Google has mentioned quite a few times.

But there are some people who don’t know these things about Bard and they have been scammed into downloading fake Bard apps from the Play Store which Google claims is nothing but malware being installed on the devices.

Google is clearly not pleased with these tactics and has warned these scammers of legal consequences. The company wants them to stop posting ads or posts for Bard which asks the users to download their supposed malicious apps. It says the multiple groups have used Facebook pages to push ads telling users to download the Bard app to get the latest updates and features.

Sadly like every other scam, there is a group that falls for such ads and inadvertently downloads apps that are malware in disguise. Google’s stance on this practice does seem ambitious considering a legal case doesn’t stand in case the actions are being done from outside the jurisdiction of a country, in this case, the United States.

The company’s got a hard task to get rid of millions of malicious apps from the Play Store and it is likely that Android’s popularity and access to millions of apps makes it an easy and popular target. Bard is a critical part of Google’s present and future in the world of AI, so we can understand the severity with which the company is trying to tackle the scammer issue.

Earlier this week, Kaspersky shed some worrying light on the malware problem for Google, claiming that over 600 million downloads of malicious apps have been recorded on the Play Store in 2023 itself. Bard is supposed to be a contender with ChatGPT and other AI chatbots in the years to come, and the last thing Google wants is a malicious attempt to malign Bard and scam users.