"I'm Paying for 'Pro'?" Unauthorized ChatGPT Charges Surge

[Anchor]

There has been a recent surge in reports of unauthorized high-cost subscription charges for the AI service ChatGPT. So far, at least 800 cases of such damages have been identified.

Reporter Lee Tae-kwon has the story.

[Reporter]

An office worker identified by the surname Lee received a text message on June 3 notifying them that 299,000 won had been charged to their debit card.

It was a one-month subscription for the most expensive "Pro" plan for ChatGPT, a generative AI service the user had never even used.

[Lee/Victim of unauthorized charge: I had never even entered my card number, but suddenly a payment was made... It was honestly very frightening. I'm worried that this might happen with my other cards as well.]

Since the beginning of this month, 1,368 payments for ChatGPT Pro subscriptions have been made in Korea, totaling approximately 400 million won.

Of these, 858 cases, amounting to about 250 million won, have been identified as suspected fraudulent transactions.

The payments were processed through nine major credit card companies, including Lotte, NH Nonghyup, and KB Kookmin.

Payments can be processed by entering a card number, expiration date, date of birth, and the first two digits of the card's PIN. It is presumed that someone obtained this information to make the unauthorized purchases.

[Hwang Seok-jin/Professor at Dongguk University's Graduate School of Information Security: There are instances where they check if a card number is valid or just a random number, and they may be profiting by bundling these after making the payments and selling them as a package.]

OpenAI, the operator of ChatGPT, stated, "It has been confirmed that ChatGPT did not initiate payments without user consent, but rather that stolen card information was used without authorization," adding that "the affected payment methods have been deactivated."

NICE Information & Telecommunications, OpenAI's domestic payment gateway, also explained that it has canceled about 700 of the suspected fraudulent transactions and is currently reviewing the remaining cases.

The company also announced that it has temporarily suspended additional payments and new card registrations, and plans to add a mobile phone identity verification process.

The Financial Supervisory Service stated that it has requested credit card companies to strengthen their detection of abnormal transactions.

(Reported by Lee Moo-jin and Kim Han-gyeol | Video edited by Choi Jin-hwa | Graphics by Jegal Chan)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.