If your product doesn't work anywhere near what your "live demo" shows, it's a scam.

That's very different from "here's the product we envision and need money to build it."

And just because others have scam demos (including Gemini) that doesn't make it okay. It makes it a race to the bottom (and is why I'm more upset about Gemini because big players are held to higher standards)

In and of itself, the product might be a decent MVP to validate the idea or some aspects of the design.

The problem is in how they've marketed. If you're taking people's money and giving them an MVP, you need to be upfront about it; if you aren't you're doing a bad thing.