Phia, an AI-powered shopping assistant co-founded by Phoebe Gates, has raised $43.5 million and achieved a $185 million valuation. However, investigations by Bloomberg and researcher Ben Edelman revealed that the Phia browser extension secretly injects its own affiliate codes at checkout, claiming commissions without providing value. This practice, known as last-click attribution, is standard in the affiliate industry but Phia's implementation, particularly the use of a feature flag that enabled the behavior on iOS but disabled it on desktop where it would be noticeable, suggests a deliberate design choice rather than a simple bug. The affiliate network Impact.com has suspended Phia's account due to the suspicious activity. AI
IMPACT Raises questions about the ethical implementation of AI in consumer-facing applications and the potential for misuse of AI-driven tools in e-commerce.
RANK_REASON The article discusses a specific product (a browser extension) and its alleged deceptive practices, rather than a new model release or fundamental research.
Read on dev.to — Claude Code tag →
- Ben Edelman
- Bloomberg
- Capital One Shopping
- Claude Code
- eBay
- Google Chrome
- Impact.com
- iOS
- Phia
- Substack
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