A University of Córdoba link used as bait to promote 'AI girlfriends': a security lesson, not news

By Universidad de Córdoba (UCO) · October 14, 2026.

This item contains no news. The headline, «Get AI Girlfriend AI Companion Limited Time Offer Compared», is promotional text in English. It offers no figures, no specific product, no identifiable company and no verifiable fact. The feed attributes it to the UCO, but the title looks like search engine optimization (SEO) spam rather than a university press release.

The only thing that can be checked is the URL. It points to a virtual tour page belonging to a university service (scai/visita_virtual), but it carries unusual parameters, among them a base64-encoded block (a format that turns data into plain text). Decoded, it appears to be an XML instruction that loads a file hosted on a GitHub Pages domain unrelated to the university. We have not downloaded or run anything, so we cannot say what it is for. The pattern, however, is well known: a vulnerable or permissive web viewer is exploited so that a domain with a good reputation, such as a university one, serves or links to third-party content.

Our reading: there is no reason to attribute this to the UCO. More likely, its website is the unwitting vehicle for a spam campaign. It is a short-term warning, and it fits the view that the immediate risk from AI lies in automated fraud and manipulation, not in a distant superintelligence. The virtual companion niche is fertile ground for this kind of bait.

For industry context, AI companion platforms are a real and debated market, but this material says nothing about any of them. We prefer a short piece to padding it out with generalities. Practical advice: do not open the link, and alert the people responsible for the affected domain.