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Tales of Cleopatra using Aloe Vera are potentially as fabricated as this stunning image.
If you’re anything like me, you probably kick off your mornings making a quick list of your day’s goals - and I’ll bet it doesn’t include chasing rumors around the internet for hours on end.
But that’s exactly what happened to me yesterday when pulling together a routine social post and media pitch for a client. A simple query into an AI agent chatbox to check some facts came back with this exchange:
Me: when was aloe vera first used?
AI Agent: Ancient Cultural Uses - Royalty like Cleopatra and Nefertiti used aloe vera in their beauty routines, and the plant was also used in embalming rituals as the plant of eternity.
The response included a reference to an official looking National Library of Medicine abstract of a paper. It looked legit so I moved on with my project.
It was when I was searching for imagery of Cleopatra and/or Nefertiti actually using aloe as skincare that I came across another post on Reddit that sternly refuted the direct royalty/aloe connection. There was also a link pasted in a comment that pointed to the same source paper that was used in the NLM paper that AI footnoted (mentioned above) That source points to another scientific looking paper written about 10 years earlier that makes the same claim, word for word, but again, without a shred of evidence.
Note: circular referencing like the one described above is a practice known as citation laundering (aka information laundering) - defined as the deceptive practice of making flawed, fabricated, or biased claims look legitimate by passing them through a chain of real, trusted sources or documents.
That’s when the rabbit hole appeared and I went down it. I’ll spare you the back and forth and silly backtracking that went on with the AI agent, which, when called out fabricated a full-blown-lie in an attempt to cover it’s tracks (something about 1000’s of bloggers and social media in the 1980’s who repeated here-say stories about Cleopatra as fact and that AI just got caught up in it - uuummm there was no widespread blogging or social media in the 1980’s - I was there, just saying).
But why am I writing about this now? I’m not here to say whether or not aloe was Cleopatra’s favorite skincare go-to before she slipped under the sheets at night - because there’s no scientific evidence one way or another - there’s only lore, and relying on that my friend can land your brand in hot water when it comes to public claims.
As a publicist, including undocumented claims in a client’s marketing materials would be tantamount to malpractice. Just one unresearched slip could potentially open them up to public ridicule, legal action, and a loss of creditability with customers and retailers.
I’ve listened to marketing experts discuss lore at length - they enthusiastically encourage it, and to an extent I agree with that approach.
Lore is a great way to romanticize a brand and bring adoring fans to a particular product. But spinning unsubstantiated stories can lead to embarrassing reality checks from journalists, social media, and the law - yuck, you don’t want the FTC breathing down your neck! Do a web search using this query “are there any instances of brands using lore as a marketing strategy that has gotten them in trouble?” and you’ll see plenty of case studies involving some of the most well known brands suffering reputational and legal fallout from making unsubstantiated claims.
Discussing the efficacy of a product is the foundation of any successful marketing campaign. But it’s crucial that claims about ingredients be based in fact, that proffered reviews and celebrity tie-ins of products be legitimate, and brand/founder origin stories be incontestable.
Here’s an exercise to help you decide what facts to use when writing brand descriptions, PR pitches, origin stories, social media posts, and promotional materials:
Trace your claim to its earliest source. If every trail ends at a brand or supplier blog, stop.
Rely on museums, university presses and peer-reviewed work. An AI summary is a lead, not a source.
Ask yourself what the story implies about your product. Lore that hints at a benefit gets treated like a benefit claim.
Write the narrowest true version. "Used in traditional medicine for thousands of years" beats "Cleopatra's beauty secret."
Keep a claim log. Claim, source, date checked, who approved. It takes five minutes and can save months of stress and work defending yourself.
The 3 Tier Test for Lore
Green: documented and hedged. "Aloe has been used in traditional medicine for thousands of years." You can point to a source, and your claim says the same and not more than the source does.
Yellow: labeled as legend. "Legend has it…" is fine when you mean that this is a tale, and you say it plainly. Don’t use “legend” but mean that it’s fact.
Red: invented, or stated as fact without a source. "Cleopatra's daily beauty secret." And anything where the story implies the product works.
Factual swaps
Instead of | Try |
|---|---|
"Cleopatra's beauty secret" | "A plant with a long history in traditional medicine" (and cite the source) |
"Proven by ancient Egyptians" | "Described in ancient medical writings" (only if you can name the text) |
"100% natural" | Don't, unless you've checked the full ingredient list |
One last thing on using AI for research
AI tools are fast and fluid, and that's the danger. AI agents are trained to please you so you’ll keep coming back. I talked above about how one particular AI agent misinterpreted, fabricated, and twisted facts into a knot researching just a simple bit of lore. Each time it told me something like “you hit the nail on the head” or “you caught something that most [people] don’t”. If you had a human assistant that did that repeatedly and just kept giving you excuses, you’d probably fire them.
This is general information, not legal advice. Rules vary by country, so have counsel review claims that touch health, "natural," or reviews.
Carolyn Delacorte is the founder of Boxwood Co
a trailblazing PR + marketing firm that’s served lifestyle brands in the food, beauty, decor, and baby industries for more than 29 years.
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