Romance fraud: AI is taking scams to another level

Could that online romance be about to cost you thousands?

We have talked about online romance fraud in the past at The Scam Hound, with some victims losing hundreds of thousands of pounds to people who they thought they were in a relationship with, but turned out the be scammers only after their money. However, the repid evolution of Artificial Intelligence has led to these scams being automated by technology - instead of talking to a fraudster, you may not even be speaking to a human being.

While a lot of the romance fraud is stemming from compounds in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia - with many of the staff there being forced to work against their will after being trafficked - the concern is that Large Language Models (LLM) could be used to hook in users, talk to them and then "love bomb" victims with compliments, affection and promises to gain their trust and develop feelings.

Communications of the ACM reports that the European Research Council has been investigating how well an LLM can replicate a romance fraud compared to a human being. While the technology is not fully there yet, it can do the work to form a romance, but struggles with diverting the chat into trying to squeeze money out of the victim as vendors like OpenAI notice the misuse and block it. However, this means the human aspect of the chat only needs to be introduced when the time comes to get the money - AI can easily use the correct language to form a romantic bond.

Research by Barclays claims in the 2024/25 financial year, there were 9,449 reports of romance fraud in the UK, costing victims over £106 million, with the average amount lost to a romance scam in 2025 being around £7,000.

79% of UK adults say AI is making scams harder to spot, with 66% claiming it is making romance scams more convincing. This may be why victims believe they are in a relationship with Elon Musk or Brad Pitt, with AI-created images helping to push the scam.

North Yorkshire Police says that while it may seem far fetched, "celebrity" romance frauds using AI can seem convincing, especially to those who are vulnerable due to loneliness or their age, for example. Thames Valley Police have also produced an ebooket offering advice on staying safe from romance fraud, which you can find by clicking here.