A University of Córdoba URL used as SEO bait to promote "AI girlfriend" apps

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

The material received contains no news story. There is only a promotional-looking headline ("best ai girlfriend app with video… no sign up") attached to the address of a Universidad de Córdoba virtual tour. There is no article text and no information about any app.

What is visible is the URL. It carries an `xml=` parameter with base64-encoded content. Once decoded, it appears to point to an XML file hosted on a GitHub Pages domain unrelated to the university. We cannot say who created it or why. Nor is there evidence that the UCO is involved: what was observed is consistent with someone having added parameters to a legitimate link.

In general, links like this are used to boost the search ranking of dubious pages by exploiting the authority of institutional domains (.es, .edu). The page's viewer can load external resources specified by the link itself, which leaves it open to manipulation.

Our take: this is not a story about AI, so we are not treating it as one. The virtual companion market does deserve serious analysis because of loneliness, privacy and emotional dependence. But that requires real sources, not a spam link. One practical tip: be wary of institutional links with long, encoded parameters, and don't open them if you weren't expecting them.