AI spews ‘dark age’ of love scams
Romance scams have entered a “dark age” this 2026 as fraudsters increasingly use artificial intelligence (AI) in crafting schemes that siphon billions of dollars from victims, a cybersecurity expert warned in time for Valentine’s Day.
Satnam Narang, senior staff research engineer at US-based cybersecurity firm Tenable, said the availability of advanced AI tools has enabled scammers to scale operations at minimal cost.
Narang said: “2026 marks our entry into a dark age of romance scams. For the price of a cup of coffee, predators can now leverage these tools to generate linguistically perfect, emotionally resonant messages designed to ensnare victims across the globe.”
Citing data from the US Federal Trade Commission, Tenable noted that investment scams—the typical endgame of romance fraud—resulted in $5.7 billion in losses in 2024, the highest of any fraud category.
The actual figure could be much higher as many victims hesitate to report losses due to stigma.
In the Philippines, the police recorded 75 cases of love scams in 2024 and 54 cases in 2025.
From Jan. 1 to Feb. 5 alone, six cases of love scams have already been recorded. This number is expected to rise on Valentine’s Day as scammers “take advantage of loneliness, trust and hope, especially online,” said Gen. Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr., Philippine National Police chief.
“We naturally focus on romance scams around Valentine’s Day, but the reality is far grimmer. This is a 365-day-a-year industry,” Narang said.
Narang said AI has accelerated the shift from online romance to investment fraud, commonly known as “pig butchering.”
In these schemes, victims are gradually “fattened” with attention, trust and staged investment gains before being “slaughtered” through persuasion to commit larger sums to fraudulent platforms.
Some operations now use AI-generated images, voice cloning and even real-time face-swapping tools to effectively cheat traditional verification methods, such as asking a match to hop on a video call.
“If it sounds too good to be true, such as investment opportunities that can lead to earning thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, it’s probably a scam,” Narang said.
