A small appliance company in Elora, Ontario has spent the past week fielding calls, emails and doorstep visitors asking to buy a washing machine it does not make. The product, a sleek model called the “keel,” does not exist. It is the star of an AI-generated video claiming that Stirling Marathon’s new washer is selling out across the United States. The company did not make the video, did not authorise it, and has no idea who did.
What actually happened
The clip racked up over 100,000 views, and copies have since spread across other accounts. “We don’t actually make that model,” a Stirling Marathon customer service representative, Jordan Cuddihy, told reporters. The likely motive is grubby and small: the video’s description links to a $20 e-book, so the whole production appears to be a lead magnet for a cheap info-product, with a real company’s name borrowed as set dressing. For now the firm is mostly trying to get the thing taken down while explaining to callers that their dream washer is fiction.
The precedent is the scary part
Treat the washing machine as a comedy and you miss the point. What this accidentally demonstrates is a new and very cheap form of corporate sabotage. For the price of a takeaway, anyone can now generate a convincing video that floods a competitor with fake demand, invents a product recall that never happened, fabricates a “sold out” frenzy, or simply buries a brand under confusion and bogus enquiries. It is a reputational denial-of-service attack, and the barrier to entry is a prompt and twenty dollars.
The same week offered the political-grade version: a fake clip purporting to show Donald Trump vandalising his office after the midterms went viral before fact-checkers confirmed it was AI-generated, with the creator reportedly crediting the tool Higgsfield. The technology does not care whether the target is a head of state or a family washing-machine business. It flattens the cost of lying about anyone to roughly nothing.
What this means
If you run a business, the uncomfortable new task is monitoring what AI says you are doing, because a motivated rival, prankster or grifter can now manufacture a crisis on your behalf for pocket change. Keep a paper trail, watch for your name attached to products and claims you never made, and have a plan for the day a fictional version of your company goes viral. The Ontario washer firm is the warning shot, played for laughs. The next one may not be funny.
We have linked the fact-check of the political clip, not the clip itself. Sources: CTV; CP24; CyberPeace fact-check, November 2026.