Frequent Scams in the AI Circle: Selling 199-Yuan AI Courses Earns Tens of Millions
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OpenAI's new AI model Sora had barely caused a global stir when 'teachers' selling courses on social media quickly seized the opportunity, aggressively promoting their offerings with bold claims:
Over a hundred people have already inquired; they'll familiarize themselves with Sora in the coming days before training.
Disgruntled netizens even directly questioned OpenAI's founder and CEO, Sam Altman, on X (formerly Twitter), asking for verification of these claims. In response to this, OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman stated on X that Sora is currently undergoing red-teaming (a security evaluation method) and is only open for testing to a select few.
Of course, this is not an isolated case. Among the many teachers selling courses, the most representative is 'AI Master' Li Yizhou—who has quietly earned tens of millions (conservatively estimated).
This 'Tsinghua PhD' holder, Teacher Li Yizhou, has attracted millions of fans on Douyin with his 199-yuan AI course. According to Feigua data, this 199-yuan course sold approximately 250,000 sets within a year, generating sales revenue of 50 million yuan. The level of exaggeration has led many struggling startups and professionals in the tech field to dub it as 'the No.1 AI scammer,' even inspiring netizens to create a viral meme titled 'The Two AI Giants of China and the U.S.' that has been spreading wildly in recent days.
Image source: Netizen creation
Since the AI wave swept the globe, it's not just companies like NVIDIA selling computing power that have made a fortune—selling courses has proven far more profitable than imagined. Since Sora went viral, numerous paid tutorials and products offering access to Sora have emerged on platforms like Douyin, WeChat, and Knowledge Planet.
These tutorials primarily cover basic content such as prompt guidance, style templates, and creative material libraries, as well as advanced courses teaching users how to monetize using Sora, with prices ranging from 50 to 999 yuan.
Sora hasn't even been publicly released yet, but people are already prepared to teach you how to use it. In response, OpenAI quickly posted on X to clarify, stating directly:
Currently, there is no public access. Anyone teaching you how to use it is either being sarcastic or running a scam.
Recently, Li Yizhou, jokingly referred to as the 'AI Godfather of China,' has been criticized for his live streams. Typically, he starts by serving up motivational talks and selling anxiety, then claims a limited-time offer of a 199-yuan course that will disappear after the stream ends. However, he sells these courses 360 days a year.
Netizens who bought the courses found that the 199-yuan offer only teaches a basic idea. If you actually want to learn something useful—sorry, you’ll need to pay more for the 1980-yuan course. In the advanced course of 1980, although the software service provided by Teacher Yizhou could be used, users still needed to continue topping up Tokens to utilize it, making the exploitation of users a prolonged process.
Just yesterday, screenshots circulated online showing that one of Li Yizhou's AI practical training camp groups was allegedly disbanded by an assistant.
In the screenshots, users who purchased the 199-yuan course questioned the authenticity of the course and were directly confronted by the assistant. When they requested a refund, the assistant disbanded the group immediately. As of now, Li Yizhou's live streaming course sales continue, while students' refund requests have turned into bubbles.
After screenshots circulated, many netizens criticized the behavior as unseemly, labeling the related tutorials as a scam to exploit naive buyers, bluntly stating:
Apart from riding the wave of popularity, it's utterly useless.
Other netizens lamented that there are still so many gullible people and remarked that the teaching assistants' emotional intelligence is also lacking. Viewers of Li Yizhou's livestreams will notice his most prominent labels are 'Tsinghua PhD' and 'Artificial Intelligence.' When these two labels are combined, his persona instantly appears more impressive and authoritative.
In reality, Li Yizhou's academic background has little to do with AI. Public records show he earned his PhD from Tsinghua University's Academy of Arts & Design, specializing in Industrial Design, Design Innovation Methods, and Design Strategy & Prototype Innovation. As early as 2012, Li gained fame after appearing on the TV show Only You, where he debated with company executives and became known as the 'most assertive job seeker.'
After several entrepreneurial ventures, Li Yizhou shifted to Douyin (TikTok) to create self-media content teaching others about entrepreneurship. Initially, Li Yizhou's self-media journey was lukewarm until February 2021, when he released a video titled "After 35, how many friends feel the same as me?" The video quickly garnered tens of thousands of views. By investing in video promotion, the view count reached 200,000 by the next morning. Following this, he released several similar videos, and his fan base skyrocketed to over 100,000.
From then on, Li Yizhou officially ventured into the knowledge payment sector. His entrepreneurship course, "Yizhou's One Lesson," on Douyin (China's TikTok) once topped the sales charts for entrepreneurship courses on the platform. Within four months, he generated 23 million yuan in revenue, and his fan base grew to over one million.
After ChatGPT went viral, this entrepreneur swiftly abandoned his original business courses and launched an "AI course for families of three," marketing it with the tagline "AI courses taught by Tsinghua PhDs that anyone can understand." Each live-streamed session offered a limited-time 199-yuan course, throwing in 1 million computing units per participant.
With Sora's explosive popularity, Li Yizhou's ads have flooded social media feeds again, leading netizens to speculate he's ramping up paid promotions.
However, beyond facing backlash for course sales, Li Yizhou made headlines today when netizens exposed that his AI courses allegedly incorporated nearly 100 unauthorized third-party non-commercial models from Stable Diffusion trainers.
Under persistent questioning from netizens, the course provider could only weakly respond: "We obtained authorization from Stable Diffusion and are using their official API."
In response, Yizhou Tech, the company associated with Li Yizhou, promptly issued a copyright statement essentially claiming: The model was independently developed with no copyright issues.
From big data to blockchain to AIGC, whenever new trends emerge in the industry, various training courses inevitably appear. The marketing is flashy, but the products being sold are often just repackaged versions of the same old content, and the people promoting them "might just be the same group of individuals."Since ChatGPT went viral last year, there has been wave after wave of exploitation—some people take advantage of information gaps to sell ChatGPT accounts, create paid communities, and promote training courses.
Shell GPTs, but underneath it's all low-quality Some individuals are directly and arbitrarily connecting to APIs, then packaging them as ChatGPT and charging for their use.
These counterfeit ChatGPT apps mostly appear in mobile app stores, WeChat official accounts, and mini-programs. Their names typically include words like ChatGPT or GPT, and their logos are often similar to ChatGPT's, making them highly deceptive.
When using these counterfeit ChatGPT apps, users will find that most of them only offer a few free questions before requiring payment to continue. Membership options include annual subscriptions, quarterly subscriptions, monthly subscriptions, and permanent memberships, with prices ranging from over 100 to over 500 yuan. Selling Accounts, Half of the Sellers Ran Away
To use ChatGPT, users need to register first, but registration requires SMS verification with an overseas phone number, which blocks some users. This has led to the emergence of black-market activities, where individuals use virtual SMS verification code reception tools like smsactivate to register large numbers of accounts and then sell these ChatGPT accounts through e-commerce platforms, social media, and forums.
Account prices generally fall into two categories: the first is assistance with account registration (priced between 10–20 RMB); the second is registering an account and topping it up with a one-month Plus membership, priced between 160–220 RMB. When purchasing accounts, most sellers promise that the accounts will not be banned. However, since last April, OpenAI has been focusing on dealing with fake bot accounts to prevent API abuse. At that time, many domestic users were banned, many of whom had purchased large quantities of machine-generated accounts, and consumers were often left in the lurch after being banned.
Training on using AI to make money, reeking of scam
Some paid communities are openly priced, ranging from 198 to 1000 yuan per year. After the community was set up, nearly a thousand people joined in one day, and the courses all used making money with AI as a gimmick. Previously, a screenshot of a ChatGPT-related course on Knowledge Planet circulated online. The screenshot showed that some courses earned millions in less than a month of operation. These AI 'mentors' follow a playbook that never changes. First, they establish a persona, then chase trends, instill anxiety, and finally point to a get-rich-quick path—buying courses. It's a seamless, well-practiced routine where they profit quickly by teaching superficial knowledge and exploiting information gaps.
We must recognize that the capabilities and impact demonstrated by current AI products are significant, and we are confident that the AI field offers tremendous opportunities for entrepreneurs. However, the problem lies in the fact that many so-called 'AI courses' fail to provide learners with genuinely valuable assistance.
Despite continuous criticism online, it hasn't stopped teachers like Li Yizhou from continuing to sell courses and monetize their content, with their live streams still drawing large audiences.