The owners of St. Louis Roofing & Siding, St. Louis, say someone employed artificial intelligence to clone the company’s website and used the company’s credentials to solicit business, according to First Alert 4.
When company owners Josh and Amy Vandevender asked ChatGPT for ideas to build a new website for St. Louis Roofing & Siding, they found the website ExteriorSTL.com, which was using St. Louis Roofing & Siding’s customer testimonials and had similarities in layout and wording.
“We advertise A+ rating with the BBB, 20 years of experience, number of projects done, the drone inspections, Owens Corning preferred,” said Amy Vandevender. “The fictitious site almost says that exactly: drone roof inspections, fully licensed, Owens Corning preferred.”
The address listed for Exterior STL does not exist, and the company is not listed with the Better Business Bureau or the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office.
The Vandevenders asked a neighbor to schedule a roof inspection with ExteriorSTL. The man who arrived, Claudio, said he was not a roofing worker and just performs inspections. Josh Vandevender asked the man about the website, saying it shows Exterior STL as an Owens Corning Preferred Contractor, which was denied by a local Owens Corning representative. Claudio said they could let him know what is wrong on the website and he would ask the company to change it.
Reporter Heather Sullivan contacted the phone number listed on Exterior STL’s website and talked to Gabe Waterhouse, who said Claudio created the website using AI. Waterhouse said they did not intend to take anything from another company, did not have any paying customers and planned to shut down Exterior STL.
Amy Vandevender filed a complaint with the website’s host, and the website was removed.
Michael Sweeney, director of cyber defense at Silent Push, reviewed both websites and said the Exterior STL website was set up to collect leads from people who needed roofing work.
“There are a lot of AI cloning sites to pull information then reproduce the site,” Sweeney said. “It seemed to be that the infrastructure was feeding back into their local database and was essentially collecting that information.”
Attorneys say information published on a website has automatic copyright protection, according to First Alert 4.
