TruthEngine AI reveals almost half of restaurant reviews are now fake, launches free review checker
**TruthEngineâ launches free online review checker so consumers can discover which restaurants have suspicious review activity**
**Proprietary algorithm reveals the number of fake reviews has climbed from 19% in 2020 to 41% in 2023**
** UK rapidly approaching ‘doomsday’ scenario where, fueled by rise of ChatGPT, most online restaurant reviews will be fake**
TruthEngine, the world’s first AI platform dedicated to protecting consumers from being duped by fake reviews and supporting legitimate businesses, has launched a free online platform that – for the first time – allows anyone to check the authenticity of the UK restaurant reviews.
Fake reviews are a significant and a growing problem, costing consumers an estimated $152 billion per year and negatively impacting consumer trust. Trained on over 17 million UK restaurant reviews, TruthEngine’s proprietary AI algorithms can detect patterns that indicate suspicious review activity.
Now with the Beta release of TruthEngine, the public can finally see which of the UK’s 120,0001restaurants have trustworthy reviews: https://truthengine.com.
TruthEngine reveals that suspicious review activity has risen from almost one in five (19%) in 2020 to almost half (41%) in 2023. The rise of Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT – which allow fake reviews to be generated at scale in seconds – could be one reason for the significant increase. If the current growth in fake reviews continues, by 2026 the majority of restaurant reviews online will be suspicious.
The fake review industry is sophisticated, secretive and oftentimes, highly coordinated. Restaurants that fake their reviews at scale typically use third-party agencies and bot farms in other countries to artificially improve their review scores. Common techniques include the use of AI tools such as ChatGPT to generate high volumes of fake reviews, the creation of “burner” email accounts, duplicate posting of the same review and sudden unusual peaks in review activity.
TruthEngine’s AI algorithm identifies and flags the different types of any fake activity detected, providing an overall truth score for every UK restaurant. 17,000 of the UK’s 120,000 restaurants have the highest integrity of reviews.
Mark Pearce, Head of Data Analytics at TruthEngine, said: “TruthEngine’s AI algorithm spots patterns and outliers that indicate coordinated attempts to fake reviews, continually monitoring restaurant reviews for suspicious activity. The algorithm rates the overall integrity of every restaurant’s reviews and provides a trust score which the public can now discover through our free online review checker. Faking reviews not only hurts customers – it also hurts the restaurant because they’re polluting their most valuable data source on the customer experience. Many restaurant businesses are in the weird situation where they are paying for business intelligence services that are actually analysing fake reviews.”
Neil Sherwood, CTO of TruthEngine, said, “Reviews are an integral and important part of how we choose where to spend our money but if current trends continue, by 2026 we’ll have a ‘doomsday scenario’ where the majority of restaurant reviews online are fake. A human can’t analyse millions of reviews and figure out who’s faking and who’s not – and that’s why we built our proprietary AI algorithm. Now, with the launch of TruthEngine’s free online review checker, people can finally make spending decisions based on truthful reviews, and legitimate businesses can get the benefit of doing things the right way. While AI is certainly fuelling the growth of fake reviews online, TruthEngine shows AI is also a vital part of the solution.”