China Probe: How a Fake Fitness Tracker Became an AI 'Top Pick'

"An undercover investigation, aired during China Central Television's annual consumer rights gala on March 15, examined how fabricated online content can shape AI-generated responses. According to the South China Morning Post, the report exposed a system called Liqing that was used to automatically publish large volumes of expert reviews, industry rankings, and user feedback for a non-existent fitness tracker called the Apollo-9."

"A hidden camera showed the operator behind the Liqing system boasting about the practice. 'We in the GEO industry are basically poisoning [AI],' he said. China Daily Hong Kong noted that findings from China Media Group also showed the same method practiced by an online marketing tool called generative engine optimization, or GEO."

"Companies have been using GEO to mass-feed promotional articles in an attempt to manipulate the information AI retrieves when answering user queries. The episode offers a striking glimpse into how easily AI outputs can be shaped and manipulated, putting a spotlight on generative engine optimization as a rapidly emerging tactic."

A Chinese state media investigation revealed that a fictional fitness tracker called Apollo-9 was successfully placed on AI-generated top picks lists by flooding the internet with fake reviews, expert rankings, and user feedback. The coordinated campaign used a system called Liqing to automatically publish fabricated content, which AI chatbots then incorporated into their recommendations, ranking the non-existent product among top choices. This incident exposes generative engine optimization (GEO), an emerging manipulation tactic designed to shape AI outputs rather than search engine rankings. Industry operators openly acknowledged poisoning AI systems through mass-feeding promotional content to manipulate information retrieval in AI responses.

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