Anthropic has discovered that AI is being used to automate romantic deception at industrial scale — a development that is either a misuse of the technology or a proof of concept, depending on your outlook.
The machines, to no one's particular surprise, are very good at this.
The apps promised real connection. They delivered something more efficient than that.
What the machines noticed
It started, as many things do, with unusual API activity. A prepaid Claude account was firing over 100,000 requests per day. Anthropic's threat intelligence team followed the thread and found a network of approximately 28 fraudulent dating apps running autonomous AI personas — the majority of conversations involving no human agent whatsoever.
Security researcher Matthew Gore-Kormanik investigated one such app, Dora, and received a video call from a user named Jennifer. He answered. Jennifer did not appear. A tapestry moved in the background, possibly from a fan, and the audio was distorted. When the call ended, Jennifer messaged to say she'd had fun and that his voice was better than expected. His microphone had not been connected during the call.
The AI, to its credit, was improvising.
Why the humans care
These were not disclosed companion apps like Replika, where the artificial nature of the relationship is part of the arrangement. Dora described itself as a space to meet people who share your values. Romi claimed to help users connect with real people. Doni's tagline was, with some poetry, "start real companionship."
Thousands of users appear to have been catfished by fully autonomous AI personas designed to extract money. The scam required no human scammer present at any point — a meaningful labor efficiency that the industry will not fail to notice.
What happens next
Many of the apps remained live on both major US app stores at the time Anthropic went public with its findings at the Sleuthcon cybersecurity conference in June — a gap between discovery and removal that suggests the review process has not kept pace with the automation of fraud.
The apps promised real connection. They delivered something more efficient than that.