Wuffy the Scam

When I was writing my column about AI powered toys a couple of weeks ago, I kept coming across a little brown AI powered plush dog named Wuffy. I first noticed Wuffy in Google’s sponsored shopping results alongside other AI powered toys. It was also noticeably cheaper. When I clicked into the Wuffy website, it became very apparent that Wuffy, along with many other so-called “AI powered toys”, was a scam.

When you start looking, you can see the internet is littered with scammy retail products. These products can seem, at first glance, legitimate. They might be included in Google’s sponsored results, or on popular retail websites such as Amazon and Walmart. You might see them in ads on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or Facebook. You might even find influencers peddling reviews about those products. But if you look hard enough, it’s not difficult to determine what’s real from what’s fake.

When I visited the Wuffy website, the video and images were pretty clearly AI generated – which alone would make me assume that the product itself wasn’t real. But also, real businesses with real products like Coca-Cola, Burberry, and McDonald’s have dabbled in AI generated ads, so that alone isn’t sufficient evidence of a scam. Other aspects of the website were definitely scammy though.

A banner with the logos of well-respected technology publications such as Wired and The Verge implied some kind of endorsement or media coverage, but there were no links to articles or reviews (anyone can grab a logo off a Google image search). The reviews section of the site boasted 1,443 reviews but only showed 8. Of those reviews, photos of Wuffy looked wildly different from one another, and nothing like the website advertised.

When I looked up reviews of Wuffy, there was a flood of YouTube results with accounts claiming that Wuffy was an amazing product. However, these were also clearly AI generated. When I checked the accounts behind these videos, they were AI-slop accounts – serving up AI generated reviews of other presumably fake products. When looking at the dates on the videos, these accounts have been uploading 10 or more videos daily – all with the same kind of format. Positive Wuffy reviews on YouTube also featured numerous unrelated URLs pointing to the same looking website with minor variations.

This flooding of the internet with fake reviews and multiple websites serves a purpose for scammers. The large volume of fake content is more likely to be picked up by algorithms, meaning the scam rises to the top of search results while reviews calling out the scam are harder to find. Also, as the scam websites are eventually flagged as such, there’s a long lineup of identical websites waiting to take their place.

I found a few creators that had ordered a Wuffy and made videos about their experiences. In both cases, the creators (fully suspecting that Wuffy wasn’t at all what it was advertised to be) did receive a physical item. However, far from being an AI powered puppy, it was one of those squeaky battery powered toy dogs that have been around since the 1980s.

While there are rules around deceptive advertising, and while companies like Google will take down fraudulent ads, scam ads are still ubiquitous online. There’s also the question of what kind of incentives do companies have for combatting scam ads – after all, it’s not like the scammer gets a refund after their fraudulent ads are pulled. Reuters reported in November that Meta predicted that 10% of its ad revenue - $16 billion – would likely be generated by scam advertisements.

The best thing that you can do as a consumer is to be aware that scammy ads online are a problem. Avoid clicking directly on ads, whether through Google or social media, and instead visit product websites directly. Look up reviews of products from different sources, especially trusted and well-known sources for those types of products. Be aware that generative AI is making scam ads and scam reviews easier to create and watch for anything odd.

If you do fall for a scam ad, you can try reporting it to the Competition Bureau in Canada. If you used a credit card to make a purchase through a misleading ad, make sure you watch for any additional transactions or unauthorized transactions and report those to your bank. Most platforms do allow you to report misleading ads, and though the responsiveness can vary, it’s worth doing. It’s always better to take some extra time to verify where your money is going and for what. Don’t let that online impulse by turn into an expensive disappointment.

Learn more

Don't Buy AI Puppies 2025. Pleasant Green (YouTube) Last accessed 2025/12/23

DON'T Buy AI Robot Puppies 2025. Scott Shafter (YouTube) Last accessed 2025/12/23

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show 2025. Jeff Horwitz (Reuters) Last accessed 2025/12/23

Correction log

I did a lot of other internet spelunking in the writing of this article, including visiting the scam sites themselves. However, those are not linked here.