Virtual girlfriend “reviews” on a university website: the link looks like spam, not journalism

By Universidad de Córdoba (UCO) · October 13, 2026.

The source material is an SEO-style headline ("ai girlfriend app long term review, ai companion worth the money from real users") and a URL from the University of Córdoba. There is no article text, no data, no figures and no user testimonials. We cannot extract any facts about AI companion apps from this source.

The URL does not lead to a review. It points to the virtual tour of the UCO's Central Research Support Service (SCAI) and appends an "xml" parameter containing base64-encoded data. Once decoded, it appears to be an instruction telling the 360º panorama viewer to load an XML file hosted on a GitHub Pages domain unrelated to the university. We have not downloaded or opened that file, so we cannot say what it contains. Nor is there any reason to attribute anything to the university: the pattern is consistent with a legitimate page whose viewer is being exploited to plant third-party content.

Our take: links like this are a well-known black-hat SEO technique. They exploit the authority of institutional domains (.es, .edu) to get dubious content into search engines and aggregators under lucrative keywords, such as "virtual girlfriend" apps. The result is that readers think they are looking at an independent review from "real users" when they are actually looking at advertising, or something worse.

More broadly, the AI companion market involves paid subscriptions and highly intimate user data, which is why it attracts people who manipulate search results. The practical takeaway is simple: before paying for one of these apps, check verifiable analyses and be wary of "reviews" hosted on domains that have nothing to do with the subject.

We are publishing this short piece deliberately. It is better to flag that there is no reliable material than to pad the story with generalities about a phenomenon that deserves serious analysis, once a source arrives that allows it.