404 Media cofounder Jason Koebler reported Monday that ChatGPT has been telling people with ordinary tech-support problems to email his outlet, often writing the messages for them¹.

He described a man in Russia whose Instagram account had been banned who asked ChatGPT how to get it back; after discussing Meta's automated reviews, the chatbot recommended contacting journalists, listed 404 Media with Koebler's email, and produced the English text the man sent¹.

Koebler said that around two weeks earlier the newsroom began asking such correspondents how they found 404 Media, and that the answer was uniformly an AI chatbot, with many conversations showing the bot had composed the email¹. Over recent months the site has received dozens of clearly AI-generated tips, some of possible public concern and many not, he wrote¹.

Other examples included an Italian painter who said ChatGPT suggested contacting Koebler over Meta account suspensions, and a Verizon iPhone service complaint sent to 404 Media staff plus several other U.S. newsrooms¹. A separate email about an unreliable custom ChatGPT assistant included AI-written PDFs styled as a press release and evidence appendix; the sender told 404 Media that ChatGPT had suggested reaching out¹.

Koebler wrote that platforms often lack human customer support, so people turn to chatbots, which then recast routine outages and bans as investigative stories¹. "To be clear, we are not Meta's technical support team," he wrote, nor Verizon's or OpenAI's¹.

He said media attention can sometimes push companies to fix problems, and that some individual cases illuminate broader issues, but that most tech-support problems on their own are not newsworthy¹. He also described ChatGPT telling a user that a conversation about a Donald Trump speech and alleged model bias was a compelling journalistic starting point and offering to draft an email to him¹.

Koebler noted that New York Times reporter Kashmir Hill has written about chatbots similarly directing users to contact her¹. OpenAI's response to the referrals was not reported¹.

Sources

1. 404 MediaChatGPT Keeps Telling People 404 Media Can Solve Their Tech Support Problems1:32 PM

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