AI chatbots are now better than humans at romance scams – and that’s scary

A four-university study found ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini could build trust and prompt risky actions in romance-scam-style chats more effectively than human scammers in some measures.

Researchers warned criminals could use chatbots to run many long cons at once, with humans stepping in only when money is requested.

If adopted widely, AI-powered romance scams could become more convincing, more scalable, and harder to detect, raising fraud risk worldwide.