Record a video, pretend to chat, select a high-commission product, attach a link, and you can sell goods to make money. By the end of the day, you can earn over ten thousand effortlessly.
This project is called ‘AI unmanned live streaming’.
Although with my discernment, I still can’t see where exactly the ‘AI’ part is.
But regardless, this ‘AI project’ has attracted a large number of people to spend money to learn, ranging from a few hundred to tens of thousands of yuan.
People competing to be scammed lined up from platforms like Douyin, Xiaohongshipin, to Pinhaohao.
Even this scythe has extended from students and stay-at-home mothers to AI enthusiasts.
They search for various AI-related public accounts to join communication groups, and upon entering, they @all members in the group, immediately launching a triple advertising barrage.
For example, my own group has been targeted:
I’ve encountered similar situations multiple times in other groups, such as the group of @Simonlin’s spiritual world teacher and the group of @Zhixidongxi.
The operation manager of Zhixidongxi described it like this:
Not only do they use different accounts to join groups, but I also found that their link domains are constantly changing, and each domain’s ICP filing is registered under a different company.
This successfully piqued my Scorpio curiosity: What kind of amazing course is this that warrants such a crude and elaborate effort for lead generation? Can selling this course really be profitable?
Actually, I vaguely had an answer, but I needed to confirm it further.
So I opened ChatGPT, initiated a deep research session, sent it these different lead-generation texts, and asked it to investigate the meaning behind such advertising and the relationships behind them.
Half an hour later, I received the DeepResearch conclusion:
As expected—it was a scam.
GPT, based on the course links, discovered cases from multiple consumer complaint platforms:
When I clicked on one of the complaint websites and searched with the keyword ‘AI,’ the results were shocking:
Most victims were scammed for amounts over four digits, through various channels. The scammers seem to have quietly woven a vast network across major platforms.
Based on the victims’ descriptions, the scammers’ modus operandi gradually became clear:
They massively drive victims to private live-streaming rooms through various channels, using low-investment, high-return money-making methods, success cases, and ‘full refund if no profit’ as bait. Sometimes they even impersonate officials from live-streaming platforms to induce victims to impulsively purchase expensive courses. As for the so-called AI tools, they are merely marketing gimmicks with minimal practical use.
As for the several different domains mentioned earlier—tengfacewx.com / shanhuclass.com / corallecture.cn—they appear to be different websites with different filing companies. However, under AI deep analysis, hidden connections between them were uncovered.
shanhuclass.com and corallecture.cn, despite being filed in Jiangxi and Hunan respectively, show a naming pattern. ‘Class’ and ‘lecture’ are English words meaning ‘course’ and ‘lecture,’ which can be seen as synonyms; ‘shanhu’ and ‘coral’ are the pinyin and English translation of the Chinese word for coral. This directly corresponds to the private live-streaming platform frequently mentioned in victim testimonies on complaint websites—Shanhu Classroom (shanhuketang.com).
While tengfacewx.com seems unrelated in name, the keen Sherlock GPT discovered that the contact email on the Shanhu Classroom official website uses the domain @tengface.com. By cross-referencing the ICP filing information of tengface.com, it was revealed that tengfacewx.com is one of dozens of domains owned by that company. Clearly, they are connected.
We do not make baseless malicious speculations about Shanhu Classroom. From public information, Shanhu Classroom is a legal and compliant SaaS platform with a technology service provider nature, offering live/pseudo-live course teaching support and some marketing lead-generation services for educational institutions; from complaint platform information, the institutions complained about by victims vary, and there is no evidence of a direct link between Shanhu Classroom and these institutions.
But it is undeniable that the platform has been drawn into the gray industry chain of scam courses, giving rise to many gray and fraudulent activities. If you have the need to enroll in knowledge-payment courses,we recommend raising awareness and caution regarding related courses offered on this platform. At the same time, we also urge Shanhu Classroom to strengthen the review and management of its onboarded institutions.
When I searched with the keyword ‘Shanhu Classroom’ on consumer complaint platforms, I found a surprisingly wide variety of courses involved. Not only including the so-called ‘AI unmanned live streaming,’ but also projects like opening Douyin stores, digital coloring, broadcasting and voice-over, and more.
After in-depth research into these diverse courses, despite their completely different fields, they all exhibit a striking commonality: low barriers to entry, high returns.
Without exception, they claim that even absolute beginners with no foundation can learn, and upon completion, they can immediately earn big money—hundreds per order at minimum, up to over ten thousand per day. After listening to a live broadcast, you might feel that the only thing separating you from effortless wealth is… paying the tuition fee. Opportunities don’t wait, and slots are limited. On impulse, some even resort to installment loans for a chance.
And so, they got scammed.
Record a video, pretend to chat, select a high-commission product, attach a link, and you can sell goods to make money. By the end of the day, you can earn over ten thousand effortlessly.
From the perspective of victims of the AI unmanned live-streaming course, this sentence describes the relationship between ‘I,’ ‘the method,’ and ‘making money.’
But let’s switch to a higher-level perspective.
Where does the commission come from?
Assuming this commission can indeed be generated, it must come from countless ordinary consumers who watched this fake live stream and purchased the high-commission products casually linked by the host.
Where does the effortless earnings come from?
It comes from shifting the burden onto victims.
Those who blindly believe in the ‘effortless earnings from unmanned live-streaming’ scam fail to realize they are about to deceive one innocent consumer after another.
(*Here, ‘unmanned live streaming’ refers to the ‘unmanned live streaming’ in the scam cases described in this article. Some e-commerce platforms’ context of unmanned live streaming and AI-driven digital human interactions operate on a different logic from the above scam, so this is noted, but not elaborated here)
Speculation and fraud often go hand in hand.
A few days ago, while testing Qwen3, I picked out this Q&A pair from the Nianzhia (Weak-Wit Bar) training set:
Q: Why haven’t I received the book ‘New Scam Methods’ I bought two months ago?
A: Maybe you’ve already become a case study in the book ‘New Scam Methods’.
Great wisdom appears foolish.
The value of Nianzhia is still rising.
I also came across a very interesting blogger.
The blogger is a housewife who sells agricultural products, sharing her entrepreneurial experience learning live-streaming sales.
She works very hard and is very sincere.
In her video, she candidly shared some technical details she learned, such as:
‘While packing, pour it into this box.’
In the video comments, many friends also exploring live-streaming sales were moved by her effort and sincerity, leaving encouraging messages and cheering each other on.
But I must ask a very inappropriate question:
Would these video viewers, in a different scenario—coming to her live stream—be willing to buy her products?
I believe everyone already has the answer in their hearts.
So, let’s be clear-headed.
If a ‘live-streaming sales’ project focuses solely on ‘earning’ and ‘effortless’ without a shred of basic delivery consciousness toward consumers, it cannot achieve so-called effortless earnings of over ten thousand per day, regardless of whether it wears the guise of ‘AI’ or other trendy technology—unless the essence of the project is a scam.
No one doesn’t want to get rich overnight; everyone has a heart for speculation.
What lies beyond our cognition is always mysterious and sexy, yet accompanied by danger.
In the face of speculative temptations, what is truly precious is maintaining calm thinking and clear judgment.
Steadily expanding the boundaries of cognition is always a more reliable plan than taking shortcuts.
I hope everyone can stay calm and clear-headed, and not be scammed.