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A Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report indicates that romance scams are prevalent in New Zealand, with AI chatbots increasingly used by fraudsters to automate deceptive conversations on dating apps. Victims, including young adults, are being manipulated into long-term virtual relationships and coerced into sending money. While some platforms like the local app 'Amor' implement verification safeguards, the report highlights a significant trend of AI-enabled social engineering in the dating sector.
A Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report found that nearly one-third of New Zealand dating app users have been targeted by romance scams, with AI chatbots allegedly playing a growing role. The report, based on a January 2025 survey, indicates that 50% of dating app users believed they had interacted with AI-generated messages. Private investigators report cases where victims engage in long-term virtual relationships with fraudsters, often sending money.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
Using AI systems to gain a personal advantage over others such as through cheating, fraud, scams, blackmail or targeted manipulation of beliefs or behavior. Examples include AI-facilitated plagiarism for research or education, impersonating a trusted or fake individual for illegitimate financial benefit, or creating humiliating or sexual imagery.
Also classified as
Victims overrely on and anthropomorphize the AI-driven personas, entering long-term virtual relationships and developing deep emotional trust.
The incident involves scammers using AI to impersonate romantic interests on dating apps to defraud victims of money.
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed
The risk is driven by human grifters who intentionally deploy AI tools to deceive victims and extract financial gain.
Added categories peak at 3: Substantial (Psychological Harm, Inferred)
The incident highlights a growing trend of scammers using generative AI chatbots to automate romance scams and defraud dating app users in New Zealand. While causing financial loss and psychological distress to individuals, the national security impact remains minor as it does not target critical infrastructure, state sovereignty, or systemic economic stability.
The AI acts as an assistant to the grifters, generating conversational text ('sweet-talking') to help them maintain fake relationships, but still requires human direction to initiate and execute the financial fraud.
Risk Level 3: Limited Risk. The report describes the use of AI chatbots to generate conversational text on dating apps, which falls under the category of chatbots and AI-generated content requiring transparency.
The AI is used to automate conversational interactions ('sweet-talking') on dating apps, acting as a chatbot to mimic human partners.
The report clearly outlines the trend of grifters using AI for romance scams on dating apps in New Zealand, backed by a cybersecurity survey of 1008 adults. While specific technical details of the AI models are not mentioned, the nature of the threat (AI-enabled social engineering) and its impact are well-documented.
None
Technology
AI-Generated Conversations
Grifters use AI to automate and contrive sweet-talking text to scam users.
Cut-and-Paste of AI Text
Dating apps allow users to manually paste AI-generated text into chats.
Data Inputs
Unverified User Profiles
Dating profiles lack verified identity data, enabling fake accounts.
Human Factors
Over-Acceptance of Online Norms
Young adults accept long-term virtual relationships as normal behavior.
Generational Bias on Risk
Users mistakenly believe other demographics are more vulnerable than them.
Process and Methods
Weak Automated Bot Detection
Mainstream apps lack systems to prevent robot accounts from onboarding.
AI system involved
Identified by automated extraction; can differ from the alleged developers above.
