Mozilla announced today that it has acquired Fakespot, a startup that offers a website and browser extension that helps users identify fake or unreliable reviews. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Fakespot Deals can be used to detect fake reviews listed on several online marketplaces including Amazon, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and more.
Founded in 2016, New York-based Fakespot uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect patterns and similarities among reviews in order to identify the ones most likely to be scams. Fakespot provides a rating or score for product reviews in order to help consumers make more informed decisions when making a purchase. The goal behind the company’s website and browser extension is to give users the ability to see where deceptive reviews may artificially inflate a product’s ranking in search engines.
“Fakespot will continue to work across all major web browsers and mobile devices, and the Mozilla team will be invested in continuing to improve the Fakespot experience for its many dedicated users,” Steve Teixeira, Mozilla’s chief product officer, said in a blog post. “There will also be future integrations of Fakespot that are unique to Firefox. The addition of Fakespot capabilities will make Firefox customers better equipped to cut down on scam reviews and shop with confidence knowing that what they are buying is of high quality and reliable.”
Mozilla says that with Fakespot, Firefox users will have access to a trustworthy shopping tool that will help improve their e-commerce experience. The company says it will bring Fakespot functionality to Firefox over time.
Although AI and machine learning have long been used to spot fake reviews, the task is likely to become more difficult with the introduction of commercially available and improved AI tools. For example, recent reports indicate that people are using AI chatbots, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to write product reviews on Amazon. It is these reviews that ChatGPT is said to be the next iteration of fraudulent and fake reviews.
Today’s announcement comes a few weeks after Mozilla launched an AI-focused startup called Mozilla.ai. The newly formed company’s mission isn’t just to build any AI — its mission is to build AI that’s open source and “trustworthy,” according to Mark Surman, Mozilla CEO and president of Mozilla.ai.