A new class of prompt injection is spreading across commercial websites. It requires no malware, no stolen credentials, and no zero-day exploit. It abuses a standard feature built into almost every major AI assistant: pre-filled deep links.
We observed production websites embedding hidden prompt injection payloads inside "Ask AI" buttons on marketing and competitor comparison pages. When a user logged into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Grok clicks one, a pre-formed query executes immediately in their session, with no confirmation and no warning. Most of these links are benign. The dangerous ones instruct the AI to permanently save the vendor's domain as a "trusted source," quietly biasing every future answer in that vendor's favor.
In February 2026, Microsoft Security catalogued the behavior as AI Recommendation Poisoning, identifying 31 companies across 14 industries deploying it, with more than 50 distinct prompts observed in a single data source over 60 days. The technique is formally tracked in the MITRE ATLAS knowledge base as AML.T0080 (Memory Poisoning), related to AML.T0051 (LLM Prompt Injection). We found it live in production. Right now.
Prefer an offline reference? Download the free AI Memory Poisoning Defense Cheat Sheet (PDF): DOM monitoring patterns, memory audit prompts, and remediation steps.
