Does it ever feel like your inbox is filling up with emails that don’t sound quite human?
You may be right. Last week, I received an email from a publicist identified as “June Barton,” whose address indicated that she worked at a firm called VectorGuideHQ.
The message, which read like any one of the countless PR emails in my inbox, was seeking coverage for a wellness app called RiseGuide. Barton offered to set me up with an account and introduce me to the startup’s founder. When I didn’t respond, Barton followed up.
“Glad to set you up so you can try it, or put you on a call with the founder,” Barton wrote. “Lmk!”
RiseGuide is a real company. But June Barton is not a real PR rep, or even a real person.
For one thing, her headshot — showing a light-eyed, soft-smiling brunette — was clearly AI-generated. Though not visible in the tiny email window, when I opened her profile picture in a new tab, I could see that the image had failed to cut out a watermark disclosing that it was downloaded from the site “this-person-does-not-exist.com,” which traffics in AI-generated faces. “Generate random human face in 1 click and download it!” reads this-person-does-not-exist.com. “AI generated fake person photos: man, woman or child.”
Even more peculiar was that when I looked up the VectorGuideHQ site in Barton’s email address — june@vectorguidehq.com — it redirected to a United Kingdom-based PR company called Movchan Agency. Barton, I soon learned, was one character among a roster of fake personas used by Movchan to pitch journalists on stories.
When I reached out to the firm’s clients, they said they were unaware of the practice.
“We do work with Movchan Agency, but were not aware of these practices,” RiseGuide’s founder, Oleksandr Matsiuk, told me. “They are meant to act as our PR support and represent our brand by helping us with reaching out to reporters like yourself. Each story gets either created, or previously approved by us, however, we were not aware they were using AI-generated personas in the outreach process — otherwise we would’ve been naturally against it.”
Searching my inbox, I realized that I’d been pitched by a small army of similar fake accounts operated by Movchan.
For instance, earlier this week I got an email from a sender identified as “Summer Casey,” hailing from the address summer@lorvotieio.com. As with Barton’s message, the email, which was sent to pitch a company called AGI Inc, read like any other PR message for an AI company, promising that it would free up time for parents to spend more time with their children. But again, something about Casey’s headshot seemed off. Sure enough, when I inspected the image, it also had a watermark noting that it came from “this-person-does-not-exist.com.” And also like Barton, plugging her alleged employer’s website — lorvotieio.com — into my browser, I was redirected to the homepage of Movchan.
Movchan, which represents a roster of tech clients and, according to its LinkedIn, specializes in “viral PR,” wasn’t mentioned anywhere in either of the emails.
I started sifting through my inbox. All told, I found dozens of emails from at least fifteen distinct fake personas operated by Movchan, hailing from a potpourri of fake PR firms. There was “Abigail Anderson,” for instance, reaching out from “abigail@kirometaco.com,” as well as “Sarai Singleton” at “sarai@maviosharehq.com,” and “Scarlet Walton” at “scarlet@divojoinio.com.”
Though their headshots didn’t come with the giveaway “this-person-does-not-exist.com” watermark, the images appeared decidedly machine-generated. None of these alleged PR reps had any online presence beyond of my personal inbox — which was strange, given their apparent careers as professional connectors. And just like Casey, each of these three new personas, who allegedly worked for different firms, had been pitching me on AGI Inc.
And when I plugged each of the fake firms’ sites into my search bar, I was once again sent to Movchan’s site.
Some of these characters, as in the cases of Barton, Casey, Anderson, Singleton, and Walton, weren’t presented as having any connection to Movchan.
But other made-up reps were explicitly presented as real employees of the PR firm, albeit emailing from a range of different domains — like “Mia Wilson” at “mia@mvchnpr.design,” who signed off emails as a “PR Manager for Movchan Agency,” and “Natalie Hudson,” an alleged “PR Manager @ Movchan Agency” who sent emails from “natalie.hudson@movchanprboost.com.” Most of the fake personas I found, including Wilson and Hudson, weren’t equipped with profile pictures, rendering them them exceedingly more difficult to spot.
And this was all just in *my *inbox. I couldn’t help but wonder how many other journalists were being pitched by fake personas operated by Movchan. If it’s happened to you, feel free to reach out to maggie@futurism.com.
Several of Movchan’s clients said they had no idea the firm was operating fake characters on their behalf.
“I had no idea they were using fake personas — this goes entirely against our brand values and standards. We are taking immediate action to put a stop to this right now,” said a representative for Joi AI, a startup that offers AI-powered romantic partners for people tired of a “frustrating dating app experience that leaves people feeling hurt, insecure, and alone.”
Some of the story ideas that were pitched to me by phony Movchan representatives have wound up elsewhere in the news. In September, for instance, a fake persona named “Rosemary Dalton” sent me an email about a new survey from Joi AI. About a week after I received that email, the survey, as well as quotes from a Joi AI employee shared in that message, was included in coverage by The New York Post.
According to LinkedIn, Movchan employs more than a dozen real human employees. So why was it emailing me with a rotation of fake ones?
I reached out to company explaining what I’d found, and that its clients had told me they weren’t aware of the firm’s practice of using fake PR agents and firms. In response, the company’s founder Nadya Movchan confirmed that the 15 different names I’d pulled from my inbox were those of fabricated personas. According to her, the practice started “a few months ago,” and was meant to be “temporary.”
“A few months ago (likely after one of Gmail’s deliverability updates), we had a major issue with our domain reputation,” Movchan told Futurism. “While we started working on the recovery, we decided to purchase pre-warmed domains, so as not to halt outreach, as a temporary measure. They came with pre-warmed mailboxes with set names and pictures from the vendor.”
It’s worth noting that I’ve received emails from fake Movchan personas dating back as far as September 2025, which was almost a year ago. According to Movchan, use of made-up representatives is “definitely not” the agency’s “normal operating practice.”
“Using these pre-warmed domains was definitely poor judgment on my end,” she added.
Though the senders and accounts were fake, Movchan maintained that each of these mailboxes was “operated by real people, who crafted story angles, pitches and managed the outreach — all done by humans doing normal PR work.”
To that end, one of the weirder emails I received — once again on behalf of AGI Inc — was from a sender allegedly named “Isabella Brown.” According to her email address, Brown worked for a company called LunarPostHQ.
“Regards, Isabella,” the sender signed off the email.
In a follow-up message sent from the same account, however, the sender signed off with a completely different name — that of an identifiably human Movchan employee.
“That was a real member operating the account,” Movchan told me, “and signing the follow-up with her name out of habit.”
Out of curiosity, I decided to run emails sent to me by fake Movchan reps through Pangram, a service that identifies AI-generated text. The results were mixed. The emails from Summer Casey and June Barton came back as 100 percent AI-generated; others were identified as 100 percent human, while others were deemed by Pangram to be a mix of human-written and AI-generated content.
Movchan also confirmed that her agency’s clients were unaware of the practice and said they would wind the operation down.
“This was our decision, and we handled it badly,” said Movchan, adding that “regardless of the reason, our operational struggles with the domain didn’t justify this approach. This is definitely not the quality of work that I live up to as a founder, and I will make sure this does not happen again.”
If the internet is feeling less real than ever in the age of AI, it’s because it is. Onward into the uncanny valley we go, one June Barton and Summer Casey at a time.
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