The Next Phishing Site May Be Recommended by AI

For more than two decades, security teams have focused on protecting consumers from threats found through traditional search engines, social media, online marketplaces, mobile apps, and email. More recently, a new discovery channel is rapidly gaining both influence and momentum: AI assistants.

Today, consumers are increasingly turning to AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Grok to answer questions like where to shop, which products to buy, and which websites they can trust. The convenience is undeniable. Instead of sorting through pages of search results, users receive direct recommendations and links in a matter of seconds.

This shift may appear subtle, but it represents a significant change in how consumers interact with brands online. According to Adobe, 52% of consumers already use generative AI to inform purchase decisions in 2026.

Instead of reviewing multiple search results and evaluating sources themselves, users increasingly receive direct answers, recommendations, and links generated by AI systems. As trust in AI-generated responses grows, these platforms are becoming influential intermediaries between brands and their customers.

Unfortunately, cybercriminals are adapting just as quickly.

Recent reports such as this one from Forbes have highlighted cases where fraudulent online stores, or “ghost stores,” and impersonation websites appeared in AI-generated shopping recommendations, exposing consumers to scams, counterfeit products, and credential theft. While these incidents do not suggest that AI platforms themselves have been compromised, they demonstrate how attackers are learning to manipulate the broader information ecosystem that AI systems rely upon.

For security leaders, this introduces a new challenge: protecting brand trust and customer safety in environments where AI is increasingly influencing purchasing and engagement decisions.

When AI Becomes THE Referral Source

Historically, consumers relied on search engines to discover brands and products. Security and brand protection teams responded by monitoring search results, identifying impersonation websites, detecting phishing campaigns and removing malicious content.

AI assistants have changed that model.

Instead of presenting a list of options, AI platforms often provide a direct answer. Users frequently interpret those answers as vetted recommendations rather than just suggestions and unwittingly proceed.

This creates a trust gap that scammers are eager to exploit.

According to reports highlighted by The Guardian for example, cloned retail websites were able to appear in AI-generated shopping results by mimicking legitimate brands and creating enough online signals to appear trustworthy. In some cases, shoppers assumed the websites were genuine simply because they had been recommended by an AI tool.

The result is a powerful combination:

Consumers trust AI recommendations.
Fraudsters understand how AI discovers information.
Fake websites can gain visibility before organizations become aware of them.

The Rise of AI Scam Tactics

The issue is not necessarily that AI platforms can be potentially compromised. Rather, attackers are becoming increasingly skilled at manipulating the information ecosystem that AI systems rely upon and they are learning to follow consumer behavior.

When consumers migrated to social media, fraud followed. When consumers embraced online marketplaces, counterfeiters followed. As mobile applications became dominant, attackers built malicious apps that mimicked legitimate brands.

The rise of AI-assisted discovery represents the next stage of this progression and its happening at an alarming rate.

For organizations, this introduces a new challenge.

Generative AI has also lowered the barrier for fraud operations. Threat actors can now rapidly create convincing website copy, localized content, product descriptions, fake reviews, and phishing pages at a scale that was previously difficult to achieve.

The challenges for organizations are no longer simply detecting individual incidents. It is important to understand how large volumes of interconnected threats are appearing across increasingly diverse digital environments.

Why This Matters for CISOs

At first glance, AI shopping scams may seem like a consumer protection or brand protection issue. In reality, they create significant business and cybersecurity risks.

When a customer is scammed through a website impersonating your brand, the damage extends far beyond a single transaction.

Potential impact can include:

Loss of customer trust
Increased support and complaint volumes
Brand reputation damage
Fraud-related investigations
Payment card fraud
Regulatory scrutiny in certain industries

Perhaps most concerning is that victims often blame the brand whose identity was abused and not the criminal behind the scam. As AI-assisted shopping becomes more common, organizations must assume that customers will increasingly discover their brands through AI-generated recommendations rather than traditional search.

For CISOs, this means brand impersonation and fraud can no longer be treated as separate issues from security risk.

Expanding the Scope of Digital Risk Protection

Traditional monitoring strategies were designed for a web dominated by search engines and social platforms.

That is no longer sufficient.

Organizations increasingly need visibility into how their brands, products, executives, and digital assets are being represented across AI-powered platforms and recommendation engines.

This is where digital risk protection strategies must evolve and where BrandShield has an answer. BrandShield’s AI Platforms Protection extends digital risk protection directly into the generative AI ecosystem. The solution identifies when harmful or infringing content is surfaced within AI-generated responses, across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Grok, and pursues takedown within the AI platform itself.

Rather than waiting for customers to report scams, security teams need to proactively identify:

Fraudulent domains targeting their brand
AI-generated references to impersonation websites
Counterfeit product listings
Fake online stores
Executive impersonation attempts
Phishing sites

This requires a lot more than traditional monitoring of the web, threats need to be identified at the earliest touchpoint where customers first encounter them.

From Detection to Enforcement

Visibility alone is not enough.

Once a malicious domain or fraudulent storefront is identified, organizations need the ability to investigate connections between threats, identify if a scam is an isolated threat or part of a larger network of scams, prioritize the critical risks first, and initiate enforcement actions before significant consumer harm occurs.

Modern AI-powered digital risk protection platforms help organizations connect seemingly unrelated indicators including domains, websites, marketplaces, social accounts, and AI references, to uncover the broader infrastructure behind fraudulent operations.

This allows security, marketing, legal, and brand protection teams to focus on the highest-risk threats while accelerating takedown efforts.

The Future of Brand Protection Includes AI

The growing influence of AI assistants represents one of the most significant shifts in online discovery since the rise of search engines. For organizations, this creates new opportunities to engage customers more effectively. It also creates new opportunities for attackers seeking to exploit trust.

The question is no longer whether AI platforms will become a target for abuse.

The question is whether organizations have the visibility needed to identify when their brand is being impersonated, manipulated, or weaponized within these rapidly growing channels.

Because the next phishing site, counterfeit storefront, or impersonation campaign may not be discovered through a search engine.

It may be recommended by an AI assistant.