An appliance manufacturer in Elora, Ont. is dealing with an influx of calls for a product they don’t make. Stirling Marathon told CTV News it’s all because of a video posted online by someone else. The video was posted on a YouTube account six days ago. It uses some of the company’s real product imagery and marketing materials alongside AI-generated content. The video claims a washing machine made by Stirling Marathon will sell out across the U.S. However, that product doesn’t exist. “We don’t actually make that model,” Jordan Cuddihy, a Stirling Marathon bilingual customer service representative, said. “After a quick Google search, I saw that there was a YouTube video that had over 100,000 views with a whole bunch of comments,” Cuddihy explained. “It talked about this fictitious washing machine that we don’t have called the ‘keel,’ and it told the story about how it was basically going to disrupt the U.S. washing machine industry, because it was so well engineered and it was starting to sell out all over the states.” Similar videos have since been posted on other accounts as well. “Within a couple of days, we had inquiries from all across North America, everywhere from Alaska, Nebraska, Delaware, asking where they could find this machine, but it doesn’t exist,” Cuddihy said. The real company did not authorize the video and doesn’t know who created it, or why they did so. “We do manufacture products here in Elora, which we’re very proud of. We manufacture refrigerators, and we’re one of the only companies in Canada that does so,” Cuddihy said. Stirling Marathon does not sell any products in the U.S. While the company continues to deal with international inquiries after the non-existent washing machine, local customers are also coming to their doors looking for the same product. “It’s just a very, very weird scenario. Don’t really know why it’s us. On the actual YouTube channel, they seem to focus in on larger companies like Tim Hortons, Giant Tiger, Costco, and then a small family-owned business in Elora Ontario,” Kelsey Lawson, a Stirling Marathon customer service representative, said. Why? According to Kami Vaniea, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Waterloo, whoever is making the videos is likely doing it for clicks. “The easiest answer is just clickbait, because if you can get enough views, you can get people to associate with your account, then you can make money off of YouTube,” Vaniea said. The original video also advertises a $20 e-book in its description, which Vaniea said could be another source for revenue. “The other possibility is that this is an account that they’re slowly building up to use for something else. If you subscribe to something, it’s now in your feed, which means there’s something else coming from that same person will also appear in your feed. And so sometimes we see groups go and create an account of a particular type, and then suddenly start pushing a different content that you weren’t necessarily expecting to see in your feed,” Vaniea said. “This is the definition of AI slop.” Vaniea said subscribers can report the videos as misinformation, but with the growth of AI and how easy it’s becoming to make videos like this, these types of videos will likely just keep popping up. For now, Stirling Marathon is trying to get the video removed.
