Improvements in AI Lead to AI Dating Scams
One thing that can be easily seen in our world today is the rapidly increasing presence of artificial intelligence. AI has amazing applications such as accurately detecting cancer from X-rays, improving the performance of self-driving vehicles, and giving you more accurate movie recommendations on Netflix. In fact, things like impressively performing customer service chatbots and ChatGPT show just how far AI has come in our world.
However, along with the many benefits of AI comes its application for more malicious means. Within the world of online dating, we are seeing a rapid increase in cases of AI bots being used to drive dating scams. Much like other uses of AI, this replaces human scammers with often more effective AI versions. How do you know if you have matched with a chatbot? Let’s take a look!
AI Dating Scams are On the Rise
People are increasingly finding that their dating scam is being driven by a bot rather than an actual person. While people using a scammer’s playbook to carry out a dating scam can be fairly easy to catch, the prospect becomes much more difficult with an AI bot that typically makes far fewer mistakes.
Dating scams have been rapidly increasing, particularly since the dawning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which drove tons of people into online dating. Scammers noticed this and began pursuing them, and their money. More recently, scammers have been shifting their tactics to incorporate AI into their malicious misdeeds.
Bot AI dating scams are increasing at a fairly concerning rate. For example, data from Canada shows a 20 percent increase in bot driven dating scams in the past year. While not all bot related dating scams are powered by AI, a large majority of the increase in them is from the incorporation of these scams.
AI Provides Different Methods for Dating Scams
There are actually many different ways in which you may encounter an AI powered dating scam due to the technology’s broad ability to do things. For example, AI can power voice simulators, which can render fairly impressive conversations that sound like real people. They can even impersonate certain people on occasion by learning their sound patterns.
AI can also lead to the creation of deep fake photos. These AI created images replace the old scammer tactic of catfishing – stealing photos from a real person and using them. The benefit of this is that it makes reverse image searches virtually useless. Thus, the old tactic to detect catfishing is not working as often.
However, one of the most useful AI functions for scammers is as a chatbot. By removing the need for actual people to carry out scams, people running dating scams can operate far more efficiently. These bots can be trained to hold long conversations with human-like responses, making it fairly difficult to detect them.
How Can You Spot an AI Dating Scam?
While AI dating scams are more difficult to detect than traditional scams, there are signs that you can look for, particularly when it comes to communicating with an AI bot. Experts note that the efficiency of AI is one tell that you may be dealing with a bot. If a match tends to quickly reply with very long messages, this is a concerning sign. Generating messages that should take a few minutes in a matter of seconds is a sign that an AI is on the other side of your match.
Additionally, an analysis of the type of language being used can reveal a cause for concern. Most (but not all) AI chatbots are trained on formal language instead of the informal language typically used in dating app conversations. Thus, if a match seems very formal and eloquent, this is a sign it could be a bot. While this does not guarantee that it is a bot, it should create a cause for concern.
A final thing to look for is a match’s ability to respond to seemingly nonsensical questions. AI bots are often confused by odd questions. For example, AI experts recommend asking something like “does your cat like lasagna?” This quirky and funny question will generally confuse an AI bot, leading them to respond in ways that do not make any sense while a human would be more playful.
Ultimately, using these tactics can go a long way toward helping you navigate the new world of AI dating scams. As always, keep a healthy dose of skepticism with any match you have not met in the real world.
