Update 12:25 PST June 01: There are indications that this project is a scam. We've made numerous attempts to contact the proprietors and will update this article further if we learn more. We're leaving the original text intact, however, until we can confirm otherwise. Please refer to the update message that follows this article for information concerning the project's legitimacy.  

BlockGPT, a recently launched Web3 company, announced the launch of its ‘chat to earn’ artificial intelligence (AI) service and related blockchain ecosystem on May 11. 

According to the company, BlockGPT aims to create a decentralized, token-governed chatbot on the blockchain with similar functionality to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The AI model's launch comes alongside the offering of two tokens, a governance token called BGPT and a meme token called AIBGPT. Both are reportedly built on PancakeSwap, a decentralized exchange that allows users to trade BEP-20 tokens.

BlockGPT is offering a “chat to earn” reward system alongside the tokens. According to the press release, this will allow users to earn nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and token prizes for engaging in chat sessions with the AI model.

A white paper located on the BlockGPT website states that the company is employing more than six generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) models on the platform and that they were trained using a proprietary dataset.

The paper doesn’t give any information on the size of the corpus, the number of parameters used to train the model, or any other details relevant to the AI’s technical specifications, but it does claim that it was specifically designed to answer blockchain-related queries:

“BlockGPT was trained using a vast dataset of Blockchain-related information, resources, and research papers. [...] As a result, BlockGPT is now capable of comprehending and answering an extensive range of questions related to Blockchain technology.”

The paper also states that the BlockGPT model will allow developers to enable “on-chain AI inference through its essential AI Inference Engine” and that it utilized the Synapse engine to provide “a reliable framework for building DApps and smart contracts that leverage AI technology.”

Related: What is Google’s Bard, and how does it work?

BlockGPT’s launch comes amid a flurry of activity in both the AI and token spaces. Memecoins such as Dogecoin (DOGE) and Pepe (PEPE) have made headlines recently and the competition between OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and a plethora of other chatbot offerings has dominated technology news for months.

Update 12:25 June 01: Information provided by numerous individuals and investigators makes it appear as though BlockGPT might be involved in a "rug pull" or "honeypot" scam: