A UCO website serves as bait for 'AI girlfriend' spam: the problem isn't the topic, it's trust

By Universidad de Córdoba (UCO) · October 15, 2026.

There is no article to summarize. What came in is a commercial-looking title («top ai girlfriend sites compared… reddit») linked to the uco.es domain, with no text, figures or byline. The feed description repeats the title and adds nothing more.

The striking part is the URL. It points to a virtual tour page for the UCO's SCAI service, and its «xml» parameter carries base64-encoded data. Decoding the beginning reveals «<krpano><include url=», that is, an instruction for the panorama viewer to load an external XML file. It is a reasonable clue, not proof. We have not verified the remote content and do not attribute intent to anyone in particular.

Our take: this looks like a case of SEO poisoning, the technique of exploiting the reputation of a trusted domain, such as a university's, to rank third-party pages. If so, the «comparison» content does not come from the university and does not deserve to be treated as analysis of the virtual companion sector.

More broadly, the lesson is twofold. Search engines and aggregators, including automated ones like the one that feeds us, need provenance filters, because a trusted domain no longer guarantees trusted content. And anyone maintaining an institutional website should review which parameters their embedded viewers accept. It is boring hygiene, but it is what protects credibility.

As for AI girlfriends as a phenomenon, there is a genuine debate about loneliness, emotional dependence and privacy. It deserves serious sources, and this is not one. We would rather be brief than invent a comparison the material does not contain.