Firefox will have a built-in ‘fake reviews detector’ — Amazon is in trouble

Mozilla, the company that owns Firefox, acquired Fakespot in May. Fakespot, a startup that helps users identify fake news through a website and a browser extension, has been used to spot fake reviews on Amazon, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Walmart, and eBay using an A-to-F scale.

Fakespot's Review Checker is scheduled to be released on Firefox version 120 for desktop and Android on November 21, 2023, according to MS Power User.

This is terrible news for folks who plan to use AI technologies, particularly generative AI tools like ChatGPT, to flood product reviews. Fakespot could make that task much more difficult by using its own AI to spot the fake product reviews.

Fakespot founder Saoud Khalifah told Axios at the time of the acquisition that reviews are important for the online shopping experience because "you can’t touch the product," he said. "You really need the reviews."

"[Fakespot] uses a sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) system to detect patterns and similarities between reviews in order to flag those that are most likely to be deceptive," Mozilla product chief Steve Teixeira told Axios in a press release about the purchase. "Using Fakespot, a buyer is able to quickly see where deceptive reviews may be artificially inflating a product’s ranking in search engines. As Mozilla continues to expand our work around ethical AI and responsible advertising, Fakespot is a natural fit."