{"id":10015,"date":"2026-04-06T14:49:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T14:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/new-york-times-medvi-ai-glp1s\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T14:49:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T14:49:10","slug":"new-york-times-medvi-ai-glp1s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/new-york-times-medvi-ai-glp1s\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Is the New York Times Laundering the Reputation of a Sleazy AI Startup That\u2019s Selling GLP-1s via a Dishonest Dumpster Fire of Fake Doctors, Phony Before-and-After Pictures, and Other Glaring Red Flags?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On Thursday, the New York Times<\/em> published a glowing profile<\/a> of a company called Medvi. The basic premise of the piece is that a single guy named Matthew Gallagher had used AI to rapidly build a pharmaceutical enterprise that\u2019s on track to do nearly $2 billion in sales this year, while hiring only a skeleton crew of humans to operate the vast AI-powered venture. According to the NYT<\/em>, it\u2019s a stunning achievement that heralds a new era of business; OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who predicted<\/a> the rise of this kind of company back in 2024, told the newspaper that he\u2019d \u201clike to meet the guy\u201d behind the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cA $1.8 billion company with just two employees?\u201d the NYT<\/em> rhapsodized. \u201cIn the age of AI, it\u2019s increasingly possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NYT<\/em>\u2018s tech coverage is generally pretty solid. But the framing of its story,\u00a0and what it left out,\u00a0left us pretty stunned. That\u2019s because back in May of last year, we ran our own investigation<\/a> of Medvi \u2014 and not only was what we found far more disturbing than the NYT<\/em>\u2018s credulous story let on, but the situation has gotten even worse since then.<\/p>\n

We first came across Medvi when we saw an AI-generated advertisement plastered at the foot of a local news article. It showed a mangled AI-generated image of an Ozempic package, loaded with misshapen words and a garbled attempt at the logo of Novo Nordisk, the drug company that produces it.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/figure>\n

When we clicked the ad, it brought us to Medvi\u2019s website, which promised that visitors could \u201close 40 pounds by July with GLP-1 medication.\u201d It was dripping with before-and-after photos showing dramatic weight loss journeys, rapturous testimonials from patients, and authoritative headshots of \u201cincredible doctors we\u2019ve partnered with.\u201d<\/p>\n

The closer we looked, though, the sleazier the whole thing started to feel. The smiling models featured on the site were clearly AI-generated, giving an immediate sense of chicanery. And when we contacted one of the doctors who Medvi claimed it was working with, he told us he had no involvement with the company and demanded that it \u201cremove me from their sites.\u201d<\/p>\n

And when we examined the before-and-after photos, we found evidence of even worse behavior.<\/p>\n

One showed a customer identified as \u201cMichael P,\u201d who it said had lost 48 pounds while achieving \u201c17 percent increased muscle\u201d and \u201c55 percent sleep improvement,\u201d his protruding stomach replaced with sharply-defined abdominal muscles. But when we dug into the origin of the photo, we found that \u201cMichael\u201d was actually a random Redditor who lost a bunch of weight in the mid-2010s \u2014 long before the advent of GLP-1s for weight loss \u2014 after giving up alcohol. His striking weight loss photos were featured in Bored Panda<\/a> <\/em>and Daily Mail<\/a><\/em> articles dating back to 2017 and 2018. The only thing that was changed was his face, which Medvi appeared to have altered using AI.<\/p>\n

The images of the woman identified as \u201cSandra K,\u201d meanwhile, were stolen from a Newsweek <\/em>article<\/a> published in 2021. And the images used for \u201cMelissa C\u201d have been floating around the web<\/a> for almost a decade; they were even featured in the same Bored Panda<\/em> piece that \u201cMichael P\u201d was. Everyone\u2019s face had been altered except for Melissa, and each image was accompanied with tales of how many pounds each person lost and the health benefits they allegedly experienced as a result.<\/p>\n

\"Alleged<\/figure>\n

Medvi\u2019s site also featured a scrolling marquee of media company logos \u2014 an impressive list including Bloomberg, Fortune, <\/em>and even the NYT, <\/em>among others \u2014 insinuating that the service had garnered a large amount of mainstream press. When we checked, though, almost none of those publications had actually covered it (in reality, the only Medvi coverage we could find that aligned with its claims was a single Forbes<\/em> listicle<\/a>, which bore a disclaimer that \u201cwe earn a commission from the offers on this page.\u201d)<\/p>\n

But readers of the NYT<\/em> story needed to wade through an astonishing thirty paragraphs of praise for Medvi before they heard about any of those red flags.<\/p>\n

\u201cMedvi\u2019s initial website featured photos of smiling models who looked AI-generated and before-and-after weight-loss photos from around the web with the faces changed,\u201d the newspaper acknowledged. \u201cSome of its ads were AI slop. A scrolling ticker of mainstream media logos made it look as if Medvi had been featured in Bloomberg <\/em>and The Times <\/em>when it had merely advertised there.\u201d<\/p>\n

After another 18 paragraphs, the NYT <\/em>wrote that Gallagher, after hiring his younger brother in April 2025, finally had the bandwidth to \u201cfix some shortcuts he had initially taken, like swapping out the before-and-after weight-loss photos for ones from real customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShortcut\u201d is a telling word. Ctrl-f is a shortcut. Store-bought granola is a shortcut. Hawking drugs online by claiming nonexistent affiliations with doctors and manipulating photos of strangers might indeed be a way to make a lot of money quickly \u2014 but whether you see it as a shortcut or fraud is probably a litmus test for your sense of business ethics.<\/p>\n

And whatever the NYT <\/em>might claim, it doesn\u2019t seem like Medvi ever really stopped cutting corners.<\/p>\n

One eyebrow-raising aspect of the operation is that Medvi has historically operated under multiple similarly-named domains. Before our first story on Medvi was published, both Medvi.io<\/a> and Medvi.org<\/a> featured the fabricated before-and-after images of clearly fake clients. But a few days after we reported about Medvi\u2019s dishonest imagery, archived versions of Medvi.org show that the site dropped the fake transformation images from its homepage. (It\u2019s unclear when Medvi.io, which is now defunct, stopped using the images, if it did at all.) And as of Friday, the day after the NYT <\/em>dropped its Gallagher profile,\u00a0Medvi.org no longer featured any before-and-after pictures of purported customers.<\/p>\n

But as recently as last month, nearly a year after the NYT <\/em>said that Medvi had cleaned up its act, an archived version<\/a> of Medvi.org shows that it was again displaying before-and-after transformations of alleged customers. They bore the same names as before \u2014 \u201cMelissa C,\u201d \u201cSandra K,\u201d and \u201cMichael P\u201d \u2014 and again listed how many pounds each person had purportedly lost and the related health improvements they apparently enjoyed. (The YouTuber Stephen \u201cCoffeezilla\u201d Findeisen also caught the discrepancy in a scathing video<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Even though they had the same names, these people that the site now called \u201cMedvi patients\u201d now looked completely different from the original roundup of Melissas, Sandras, and Michaels. Worse, some of the images now bore clear signs of AI-generation: the new Sandra\u2019s fingers, for example, are melted into her smartphone in one of her mirror selfies. (There is one new customer included in the lineup, a \u201cHelen K,\u201d but she appears to have no fingernails on one hand, another clear sign of AI use.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe results speak for themselves,\u201d reads a chunk of text above the seemingly AI-generated images. \u201cSometimes you have to see it to believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Alleged<\/figure>\n

While digging into Medvi\u2019s current practices, we also stumbled upon yet another domain, Medv.co<\/a>. The site is emblazoned with Medvi\u2019s logo, and when we clicked on links to the company\u2019s privacy policy and terms of service, we were redirected to Medvi.org.<\/p>\n

Unlike the other alleged clients featured over on Medvi.org and Medvi.io, these people \u2014\u00a0one depicting a younger shirtless man, the other showing an older woman with graying hair, both of whom are pictured snapping mirror selfies \u2014\u00a0weren\u2019t given names or health improvements. But their photos each bear telling signs of AI-generation, like overly smooth skin, warped smartphones, melted pupils, and distorted background artifacts.<\/p>\n

In other words, as of publishing this story \u2014 and days after the NYT<\/em>\u2018s \u2014 Medv.co\u2019s landing page still features before-and-after weight loss transformation images of people who do not appear to be real.<\/p>\n

\"Before-and-after<\/figure>\n

The NYT <\/em>also neglected to mention that Medvi received a strongly-worded warning letter<\/a> from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just two months ago, in February 2026. The warning came amid a broader crackdown on the controversial telehealth world, as Stat News <\/em>reported last month<\/a>, which also feels like important context about Medvi\u2019s skyrocketing success in an explosive market that regulators are attempting to rein in.<\/p>\n

In the letter, the FDA took issue with numerous Medvi tactics. One compliance failure it noted was the company\u2019s practice of using images<\/a> of GLP-1 vials and pill bottles with the name \u201cMEDVI\u201d splashed across them, which the regulator argued was misleading to consumers, as it suggested that Medvi was the compounder of the drugs it sells \u201cwhen in fact it is not.\u201d (Medvi.org has since removed Medvi\u2019s name from these fake vials.)<\/p>\n

The FDA also admonished Medvi\u2019s marketing language around some of the murkier pharmaceutical products that Medvi has offered. The letter warned that Medvi\u2019s site had positioned unapproved compounds as \u201cFDA-approved or otherwise evaluated for safety and effectiveness when they have not.\u201d (The letter specifically called attention to claims made on the domain Medvi.io, which is now shut down, though the letter was addressed to Medvi LLC; it\u2019s unclear how much the FDA knows about Medvi\u2019s tangled web of domains.)<\/p>\n

\u201cFailure to adequately address any violations may result in legal action without further notice, including, without limitation, seizure and injunction,\u201d the FDA warned Medvi in the letter.<\/p>\n

Medvi has also been ensnared in multiple lawsuits and legal actions, including a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case that accuses its partner OpenLoop<\/a>, a telehealth company, and a compounding pharmacy of selling a compounded weight loss pill with \u201cno demonstrated mechanism of absorption or efficacy.\u201d Medvi isn\u2019t named as a defendant, but the plaintiff in the case claims to have purchased the drugs via Medvi\u2019s platform.<\/p>\n

Dr. Jonathan Slotkin, a neurosurgeon, hospital executive, and investor called the NYT<\/em>\u2018s profile of Medvi<\/a> a \u201ctranscript of a Silicon Valley fever dream\u201d and a \u201cbyproduct of regulatory lag and consumer desperation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Medvi story \u201cprobably needed to be reported as a health story, with the same questions that are asked in health stories,\u201d Slotkin told Futurism<\/em>. \u201cIt didn\u2019t look like a health story to me; it looked like a tech story.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In response to the NYT<\/em>\u2018s Medvi profile, some readers lit up with excited praise.<\/p>\n

\u201cTHIS IS CRAZYY!!!!\u201d wrote one X user<\/a>, while another<\/a> declared that \u201cright now, the margins are enormous for anyone who moves fast enough.\u201d <\/p>\n

Others, though, were quick to raise concerns<\/a> about Medvi\u2019s ongoing<\/a> ethical issues. Many cited Futurism\u2019s <\/em>previous reporting, while others pointed out that, as of the NYT <\/em>piece\u2019s publication, Meta platforms were crawling with paid Medvi ads<\/a> promoted by accounts belonging to clearly fake doctors. One alleged doctor being used to promote Medvi\u2019s erectile dysfunction drugs \u2014\u00a0another burgeoning area of its telehealth business \u2014\u00a0had the head-scratching name<\/a> of \u201cDr. Tuckr Carlzyn MD,\u201d which doesn\u2019t seem to be associated with any real physician.<\/p>\n

Indeed, a review<\/a> by the pharmaceuticals-focused outlet Drug Discovery & Development<\/em> found the widespread use of fake doctors to promote Medvi drugs, including both semaglutide and erectile dysfunction meds. As Findeisen noted in his video, some of these advertisements also appear to include AI-faked before-and-after weight loss videos.<\/p>\n

We reached out to Medvi to inquire about the proliferation of fake doctors, and asked specifically whether Medvi paid to promote these accounts, either directly or through a contracted third-party firm (according to the NYT\u2019s<\/em> report, Gallagher hired \u201cmedia agencies to help buy ads to entice customers.\u201d) <\/p>\n

The company didn\u2019t respond to these questions,\u00a0nor any others we asked.<\/p>\n

But after we reached out \u2014\u00a0and after the flood of public scrutiny on platforms like X, YouTube, and Threads \u2014\u00a0we discovered that a bunch of the fake doctor accounts promoting Medvi ads had been deleted.<\/p>\n

Criticism of the NYT <\/em>piece has come from all corners of the web, including by many in the tech, venture capital, and health worlds.<\/p>\n

\u201cOk there\u2019s an easily googleable FDA compliance issue, honestly would be hard for the NYT <\/em>not to see it, so why didn\u2019t they write about it?\u201d asked<\/a> Sheel Mohnot, a fintech investor at the venture capital firm Better Tomorrow Ventures.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just an automated GLP-1 prescription mill,\u201d commented<\/a> the journalist and professor Jeff Jarvis, calling it \u201cnothing to lionize.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll in all, glorifying Medvi was not The New York Times\u2019 <\/em>finest hour,\u201d AI skeptic and cognitive scientist Gary Marcus wrote in a Substack post<\/a>, adding that Medvi should be seen as a \u201cwarning sign \u2014 for how AI can be abused.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Medvi has yet to respond to our questions, the company\u2019s founder, Gallagher, has spent the last few days on X defending his company. He complained<\/a> in one post \u2014\u00a0seemingly in reference to criticism \u2014 that \u201cthe most low t [testosterone] guys\u201d are \u201cthe loudest online\u201d and the \u201cKarens of the internet.\u201d In another post, he wrote<\/a> that it\u2019s \u201cactually a little crazy the number of people who form a whole opinion from a headline and then publicly wish horrible things will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDetails matter,\u201d he continued. \u201cHalf of X thinks I\u2019m slinging fake Ozempic out of my garage with a robot doctor it\u2019s wild.\u201d (Recall that we first came across Medvi when we saw an ad depicting an AI-generated box of Ozempic.)<\/p>\n

In his posts, Gallagher repeatedly<\/a> claimed<\/a> that the fake doctors on social media were the result of poorly-policed affiliates run wild, complaining that<\/a> he\u2019s \u201cwatching in realtime as people learn about white label, drop shipping, and affiliate marketing is like seeing cavemen \u2018fire bad.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Gallagher also had a confusing response to the FDA letter.<\/p>\n

\u201cShow the whole letter and you\u2019ll see it was not directed to me, but to an affiliate with outdated verbiage,\u201d he wrote<\/a>. \u201cWe were notified and had it removed.\u201d (The FDA letter was addressed to \u201cMEDVi, LLC dba MEDVi.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhite label telemedicine is a huge benefit with a net positive for humanity,\u201d Gallagher continued. \u201cIt has been the driving force behind big pharma lowering prices and making healthcare accessible to everyone from home. Low energy people think offering life-changing weight loss medication, prescribed by a doctor, is a trendy \u2018pill mill.\u2019 Wait til you see what\u2019s possible with longevity services and peptides. I\u2019m bullish on humanity. If you are too, I\u2019ll help you build.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a certain level, the NYT<\/em> is right that it\u2019s pretty fascinating that AI has let a company with just a handful of staff rake in such an astonishing amount of money. But its story seemed determined to ignore or downplay important context about how it got there: by employing a long list of lazy and deceptive tricks to profit massively off consumers desperate for a lower-cost way to access a pharmaceutical widely heralded as a miracle drug.<\/p>\n

Or, the paper of record put it: \u201cshortcuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

More on Medvi: <\/strong>This Sleazy GLP-1 Prescription Site Is Using Deepfaked \u201cBefore-and-After\u201d Photos of Fake Patients, and Running Ads Showing AI-Generated Ozempic Boxes<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\n

The post Why Is the New York Times Laundering the Reputation of a Sleazy AI Startup That\u2019s Selling GLP-1s via a Dishonest Dumpster Fire of Fake Doctors, Phony Before-and-After Pictures, and Other Glaring Red Flags?<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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