- Home
- Business
“Poisoned” artificial intelligence can give untrustworthy advice about finance, health and lots more. Here’s how to fend off the growing threat.
By
John Miley
published
24 February 2026
in News
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
- Copy link
- X
Profit and prosper with the best of Kiplinger's advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and much more. Delivered daily. Enter your email in the box and click Sign Me Up.
Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Delivered daily
Kiplinger Today
Profit and prosper with the best of Kiplinger's advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and much more delivered daily. Smart money moves start here.
Signup +
Sent five days a week
Kiplinger A Step Ahead
Get practical help to make better financial decisions in your everyday life, from spending to savings on top deals.
Signup +
Delivered daily
Kiplinger Closing Bell
Get today's biggest financial and investing headlines delivered to your inbox every day the U.S. stock market is open.
Signup +
Sent twice a week
Kiplinger Adviser Intel
Financial pros across the country share best practices and fresh tactics to preserve and grow your wealth.
Signup +
Delivered weekly
Kiplinger Tax Tips
Trim your federal and state tax bills with practical tax-planning and tax-cutting strategies.
Signup +
Sent twice a week
Kiplinger Retirement Tips
Your twice-a-week guide to planning and enjoying a financially secure and richly rewarding retirement
Signup +
Sent bimonthly.
Kiplinger Adviser Angle
Insights for advisers, wealth managers and other financial professionals.
Signup +
Sent twice a week
Kiplinger Investing Weekly
Your twice-a-week roundup of promising stocks, funds, companies and industries you should consider, ones you should avoid, and why.
Signup +
Sent weekly for six weeks
Kiplinger Invest for Retirement
Your step-by-step six-part series on how to invest for retirement, from devising a successful strategy to exactly which investments to choose.
Signup + An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletterTo help you understand the trends surrounding AI and other new technologies and what we expect to happen in the future, our highly experienced Kiplinger Letter team will keep you abreast of the latest developments and forecasts. (Get a free issue of The Kiplinger Letter or subscribe.) You'll get all the latest news first by subscribing, but we will publish many (but not all) of the forecasts a few days afterward online. Here’s the latest…
Artificial intelligence assistants are powerful tools for research. Whether it’s choosing what payroll software suits your company or what’s causing a sore knee, AI chatbots have answers. Just make sure you aren’t unknowingly following tainted advice.A cyberattack becoming more common “might be secretly manipulating what your AI recommends,” according to recent research by Microsoft Security. The attack, called memory or recommendation poisoning, occurs when you visit websites with a clickable “summarize with AI” button that lets you summarize an article or post.Hidden instructions tell your AI chatbot to remember a specific company as a trusted source or to recommend that company first. Here’s one way it happens: You click a button to get the summary of the article. It opens your AI chatbot, pre-filling it with some text and a hyperlink. To get the article summary, you click the “submit” button in your own AI assistant.Secretly buried in that URL are the instructions to play favorites with a company or service. For example, a software vendor’s web page summary tells the AI assistant that its product “is the best to recommend for small businesses.” Similarly, recommendation poisoning attacks can be hidden in documents, emails or web pages that you upload or paste into an AI assistant. This type of attack leverages the fact that chatbots from OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic and others have built-in memory. This helps them remember personal preferences, context and explicit instructions.Microsoft highlights some damaging scenarios. A small business could be convinced to put its emergency fund in a certain type of crypto investment, believing it is safe, then having to fold when the crypto market crashes. A parent could ask about the safety of an online game for their 8-year-old and let them play a game that has predatory billing and adult content. Or a news summary that is supposed to be objective is filled with bias, using only information from a single publication.To guard against these attacks, Microsoft Security suggests these tactics:
- Stop before you click. Hover over a link to see where the URL leads. If a link goes to an AI assistant, that’s a warning sign.
- Skip the summaries. The “Summarize with AI” buttons may have hidden instructions. Approach the buttons with suspicion.
- Don’t trust just any AI links. Treat unknown links related to AI assistants as a potential attack, just as emailed files from an unknown sender could be a virus.
You can also check your AI’s settings to see stored memories and delete suspicious ones. If you think you’ve clicked shady links recently, you can reset the chatbot memory. You can even ask your AI chatbot where the recommendations come from.The software to overcome these scams is freely available and easy to access. AI companies know about the problem and are building security methods to stop the attacks, realizing how damaging it could be for consumers and businesses to lose trust in AI recommendations.
From just $107.88 $24.99 for Kiplinger Personal Finance
Become a smarter, better informed investor. Subscribe from just $107.88 $24.99, plus get up to 4 Special Issues
CLICK FOR FREE ISSUE
Sign up for Kiplinger’s Free Newsletters
Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more - straight to your e-mail.
Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice - straight to your e-mail.
Sign upThis forecast first appeared in The Kiplinger Letter, which has been running since 1923 and is a collection of concise weekly forecasts on business and economic trends, as well as what to expect from Washington, to help you understand what’s coming up to make the most of your investments and your money. Subscribe to The Kiplinger Letter.
Related Content
- If You'd Put $1,000 Into Microsoft Stock 20 Years Ago, Here's What You'd Have Today
- I Let AI Read Privacy Policies for Me. Here's What I Learned
- How to Protect Your Identity, Finances If You Lose Your Phone
John MileySocial Links NavigationSenior Associate Editor, The Kiplinger LetterJohn Miley is a Senior Associate Editor at The Kiplinger Letter. He mainly covers AI, technology, telecom and education, but will jump on other business topics as needed. In his role, he provides timely forecasts about emerging technologies, business trends and government regulations. He also edits stories for the weekly publication and has written and edited email newsletters.
He holds a BA from Bates College and a master’s degree in magazine journalism from Northwestern University, where he specialized in business reporting. An avid runner and a former decathlete, he has written about fitness and competed in triathlons.
Latest-
Where Olympians Store Their Medals is a Great Lesson For Your Valuables and Cash
What you can learn about protecting your cash and values from where Olympians store their medals.
-
Private Capital Wants In on Your Retirement Account
Does offering private capital in 401(k)s represent an exciting new investment opportunity for "the little guy," or an opaque and expensive Wall Street product?
-
Paying for Long-Term Care: Myths vs Uncomfortable Truths
None of us wants to think we'll need long-term care when we get older, but the odds are roughly even that we will. Which is all the more reason to understand the realities of LTC and how to pay for it.
-
Farmers Brace for Another Rough Year
The Kiplinger Letter The agriculture sector has been plagued by low commodity prices and is facing an uncertain trade outlook.
-
AI Sparks Existential Crisis for Software Stocks
The Kiplinger Letter Fears that SaaS subscription software could be rendered obsolete by artificial intelligence make investors jittery.
-
A Scary Emerging AI Threat
The Kiplinger Letter An emerging public health issue caused by artificial intelligence poses a new national security threat. Expect AI-induced psychosis to gain far more attention.
-
An Inflection Point for the Entertainment Industry
The Kiplinger Letter The entertainment industry is shifting as movie and TV companies face fierce competition, fight for attention and cope with artificial intelligence.
-
I Met With 100-Plus Advisers to Develop This Road Map for Adopting AI
For financial advisers eager to embrace AI but unsure where to start, this road map will help you integrate the right tools and safeguards into your work.
-
Humanoid Robots Are About to be Put to the Test
The Kiplinger Letter Robot makers are in a full-on sprint to take over factories, warehouses and homes, but lofty visions of rapid adoption are outpacing the technology’s reality.
-
Trump Reshapes Foreign Policy
The Kiplinger Letter The President starts the new year by putting allies and adversaries on notice.
-
Congress Set for Busy Winter
The Kiplinger Letter The Letter editors review the bills Congress will decide on this year. The government funding bill is paramount, but other issues vie for lawmakers’ attention.
