The AI money machine that never paid out
For two years US regulators have been shutting down schemes that sold entrepreneurs AI-powered shops and systems promising income on autopilot. The pitch is still everywhere. Here's how to recognise it — and what a website can and can't honestly do for a business.
In March, the US Federal Trade Commission settled with a company that had been selling AI products and licences to entrepreneurs and small business owners since 2023.
The FTC’s allegations were blunt. The company had, it said, falsely claimed that buyers would — or were likely to — make substantial earnings, and falsely told them they were protected by a refund or buy-back guarantee. The court order carried an $18 million judgment, mostly suspended, and banned the company and its operators from selling business opportunities at all, or making earnings claims they can’t back up.
It was not a one-off. It was one of a series.
A pattern, not an accident
In September 2024 the FTC started a sweep it calls Operation AI Comply, aimed at businesses using “AI” as a magic word in place of evidence.
A good share of the cases have one thing in common: they sold ordinary people a business that would supposedly run itself. Several were e-commerce coaching schemes that marketed AI as a route to “significant passive income through online storefronts.” Another promised an “automated, AI-powered system” that would generate thousands of dollars a month. According to the FTC, about a fifth of the people who bought in earned nothing at all, and around a third earned less than $2,500. The judgments in that one alone came to more than $20 million.
The sweep has carried on through a change of government. The pitch has carried on too.
What the pitch sounds like now
You will recognise some of it:
- “Our AI builds you a complete online store in minutes — you just collect the profits.”
- “Done-for-you AI agents that replace your staff and make money while you sleep.”
- “Students are making five figures a month. Spots are limited.”
- “Risk-free — full refund guarantee.” (Read the conditions.)
The technology in these offers is often real. What isn’t real is the promise attached to it. A tool can build a shop. It cannot supply the customers, the product people actually want, the delivery that turns up, or the reputation that brings them back — and those are the parts that make a business earn anything.
The awkward position of a company like us
devkoi is an AI tool that builds websites. So it’s fair to ask what separates it from the offers above.
Here is the honest line. A website is a shopfront, not an income. It can make a business easier to find, easier to trust and easier to buy from. It cannot create demand that isn’t there, and anyone who tells you their website — or their AI — will earn money for you on its own is telling you something that regulators keep finding to be untrue.
That is why you won’t find earnings claims anywhere on this site. Building is free; publishing to your own address starts at $19 a month; and what you get for that is a website, not a promise about what it will make.
Red flags worth memorising
- Any earnings figure. “Make £5,000 a month”, “six figures”, “replace your salary”. Ask how many buyers actually achieved it, in writing. The FTC cases above are full of numbers that turned out to describe almost nobody.
- “Passive” or “on autopilot”. Real businesses involve customers, and customers involve work.
- The product is the opportunity. If what you’re mostly buying is the right to sell the same thing to someone else, or a course on how to get rich with it, be very careful.
- Urgency. Limited spots, a price that rises at midnight, a “founder’s rate” that expires today.
- Guarantees with conditions. A refund that requires you to complete forty tasks in thirty days and submit evidence of each is not a guarantee.
- Testimonials you can’t check. Screenshots of dashboards and first names only. (We wrote about fake reviews earlier this month.)
What to do this week
1. If you’re being pitched, ask for typical results — in writing. Not the best case: what the median buyer earned. A genuine business can answer that. A scheme will change the subject.
2. Look the company up with your local consumer regulator before paying. In the US, the FTC publishes its cases. Elsewhere, your consumer protection or trading standards body does similar work.
3. Read the refund terms before the sales page. If the guarantee has conditions, assume they were written to be failed.
4. Spend on the parts that actually earn. A product people want, a clear price, a way to be found, and good service. A website helps with the third of those; it doesn’t replace the others.
5. Put honest facts on your own site, not promises. What you sell, what it costs, where you are, how to reach you. That’s what turns a visitor into a customer — not a claim about what they’ll earn.
“Add a clear price list and our phone number to the homepage, and take out the ‘guaranteed results’ line.”
6. If you’ve already paid into one of these, report it. Regulators build cases from complaints. Yours might be the one that gets someone else’s money back.
(General information, not financial or legal advice.)
The machine in these pitches always pays out to someone — just not to the person who bought it.
The real money machine in a small business looks much more like the one in the picture: a till, rung up one sale at a time, by customers who chose to come back. Software can help more of them find the door. It can’t walk through it for them.