The video suggested the “bombshell washer” by Stirling Marathon would disrupt North America’s washer industry.
It would be good news for any other business, except the Elora, Ont., appliance maker doesn’t even sell washers.
The Ontario business featured in a recent scam powered by artificial intelligence, where someone posted a YouTube video combining real company marketing images with AI-generated content to advertise a fictional washer called “the Keel.”
The company has received hundreds of emails, calls and social media interactions from people asking where to buy the product — with some even showing up at the facility.
The inquiries started last Wednesday, according to Jordan Cuddihy, Stirling Marathon’s customer service representative.
“I got here in the morning and started to check the inquiries in the morning and I saw a number of emails and messages from all over the world all over North America asking about this ‘Keel’ washing machine that we supposedly make,” Cuddihy told CBC News.
“After the second or third inquiry mentioning the Keel machine, I did a quick Google search and I was led to this YouTube video, so that’s when I realized something was up.”
The local appliance maker has sold refrigerators, freezers and coolers since 2016.
CBC News reached out to YouTube, which has has since taken down the video and channel.
A screenshot of the fake Stirling Marathon washer video on YouTube. Vice President Phil Greenway says the video had been viewed around 200,000 times before it was taken down. (Youtube)
‘A weird feeling’
The 16-minute video showcased a supposed Stirling Marathon washer called the “Keel.” Using Stirling Marathon’s marketing and factory imagery, the video claimed the washer would revolutionize the industry with its replaceable modular electronics, failsafe sensors and lower water usage.
Phil Greenway, vice president of sales and marketing at Stirling Marathon and one of the people whose likeness was used in the video, thinks the whole situation is strange.
“It was a weird feeling seeing your face tied to a product that is not ours,” he said. “It was definitely bizarre, but it’s clear that it was generated by some AI bot or something where it just scraped the internet of all images, previous articles, videos that were posted about our company.”
He thinks the video is “funny”, especially since he doesn’t believe the technology behind the claims exists.
Shaina Raza, an applied machine learning scientist at Vector Institute in Toronto, said there are several tells in the video leading her to believe part of it was made by AI, including the number of modules in the machine changing from one scene to the next.
“Second, some of the text and the numbers in the video don’t make sense… common mathematical mistakes we can find in any AI-generated images,” she explained.
It would take additional verification to confirm that the video was entirely made by AI, Raza said.
Fridges in boxes at Stirling Marathon factory. The AI scam video portrayed a fictional washer called the “Keel,” which supposedly had replaceable modular electronics and failsafe sensors while also using less water. (Carly Thomas/CBC)
Revenue on views could be a motivation behind the video, according to University of Waterloo associate professor of electrical and computer engineering Kami Vaniea.
“If you can get enough people on YouTube to join your channel and subscribe, and you can build all your content with AI so that you don’t actually need to spend time on it, then even a small amount of payback is worth it,” she explained.
The video also linked to a $20 dollar e-book, which Vaniea suspects was another money-making aspect to the scam.
“You start dropping links and hoping a percentage of people will follow them and pay for a report that is probably also AI-generated,” she said.
YouTube takes down video, channel
Stirling Marathon reported the video to both YouTube and Facebook once it became aware of what was happening.
CBC News asked YouTube what steps it would take regarding the company’s request to have the video and channel taken down.
YouTube said it had strict policies prohibiting scams, deceptive practices and impersonation.
“We require creators to disclose realistic altered or synthetic media,” a spokesperson told CBC. “We’ve reviewed the channel in question and have terminated it for violating our Community Guidelines.”
But to Greenway, perhaps the “most concerning” thing about the video was that he says YouTube didn’t tag it as containing AI-generated content.
“I do think they have a responsibility to tag it,” he said.
A screenshot from YouTube’s Community Guidelines Transparency Report. The company has removed 2,310,181 channels and videos between April and June for violating its spam and deceptive practices policy. (Youtube)
In their emailed statement, YouTube’s spokesperson highlighted a section of the company’s policy on AI labelling, which said:
“Since 2024, we’ve been labelling content when creators disclose they’ve used AI tools. We require creators to disclose when they upload realistic content that has been meaningfully altered or synthetically generated, and YouTube can also apply a disclosure label directly if a creator fails to do so.”
YouTube did not address why the Stirling Marathon video was not flagged as AI content.
While YouTube did take down the video, Vaniea getting one removed is not always simple.
“It’s hard for me to comment on exactly what YouTube does, but I can say from a lot of other domains it’s really hard to get content taken down if you don’t have a legal reason behind it,” she said. “This is the sort of situation where YouTube kind of just doesn’t want to get involved unless there’s a demonstrated problem.”
‘An old problem’
An analysis by CBC New’s visual verification team revealed that the Instagram account linked to the now-removed YouTube channel is based in India.
But Vaniea said this doesn’t mean much, as “tracking the source is so nightmarish that usually there’s nothing that a consumer can do.”
“This is an old problem,” she said. “It’s been this way in scam emails forever. What you’re looking at here is a very similar version to that. They’re trying to go and take a legitimate, real group and send all the consequences of that group while they get all the benefits.”
Greenway thinks there’s a silver lining to the whole debacle.
“It’s been good to get our brands out there and people to know a bit more about our company,” he said. “The truth is that we do manufacture our refrigerators here. We also import other products and electric ranges, freezers, and some other larger refrigerators.”
Cuddihy hopes the company is able to benefit from the attention.
“I think some people were disappointed, it sounds like such a great machine so people were disappointed to learn that it’s not true. But hopefully we can turn them on to some of the other products that we do make.”