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Valentine's Warning as AI Fuels 'Insidious' Love Scams

Ahead of Valentine's Day, AI and machine learning systems analyse social media profiles to craft personalised romance scams targeting Australians seeking relationships online.
Because people share life events online, UNSW computer science lecturer Lesley Land warned that criminals feed social media posts into machine learning systems to automate grooming, which previously took months.
CHOICE reports Australians have lost large sums to romance scams since 2020, and victims often remain silent while the Australian Banking Association warns flawless photos and fast relationships are red flags.
AI-Driven automation has allowed fraudsters to scale operations and create more sophisticated, emotionally manipulative scams, while shame leaves victims of romance scams less likely to report fraud, advocates warn.
Consumer groups including CHOICE, Financial Counselling Australia and ACCAN are calling on the federal government to close gaps as the Commonwealth's Scams Prevention Framework places no obligations on platforms, while some banks use AI to block scams.

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15 Articles

AI fuelling 'insidious' love scams in Australia

File photo Australians looking for love are having their social media used against them as AI is used to tailor romance scams before Valentine's Day.

6 hours ago·Otago, New Zealand

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PerthNow

+2 Reposted by 2 other sources

Center

Valentine's warning as AI fuels 'insidious' love scams

Criminals are feeding Australians' social media information into AI to create targeted romance scams ahead of Valentine's Day.

10 hours ago·City of Perth, Australia

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Fast Company

Lean Left

Love, lies, and LLMs: How to protect yourself from AI romance scams

The damage isn't just personal. It can affect your organization, too.

20 hours ago

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futurefive.com.au

McAfee warns Australians of AI-fuelled Valentine scams

McAfee warns Australians AI-powered romance scams are surging ahead of Valentine’s Day, with one in seven victims losing an average AUD $780.

7 hours ago

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itbrief.in

+5 Reposted by 5 other sources

AI-fuelled romance scams surge with deepfake deception

AI-driven romance scams using deepfakes and chatbots surge, tricking Australians into long-term emotional manipulation and costly frauds.

8 hours ago

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Netzpalaver | #CloudComputing #Datacenter #Cybercrime #Telekommunkation #Infrastruktur

Ai Drives the Industrialization of Romance Scams

Romance scams have developed into an industrialized AI-supported business model: uncoordinated individual offenders have become a billion-dollar, professionally organized criminal ecosystem. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), investment fraud – the real "endgame of many Romance scams" – caused damage of 5.7 billion US dollars in 2024. Experts assume that it is only [...] The article AI drives the industrialization of Romance scams …

18 hours ago

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