Artificial intelligence could be targeting you on texts, social media and dating apps. Some victims lost thousands of dollars to people they thought were real women but turned out to be fakes. The people behind the scheme were stealing their cash and hearts.
“Hey, hey honey, you’re the best,” says a woman who may look real to some, but two security experts say the video is heavily filtered, with unnatural eyes and the chin blending into a neck.
Jim, who asked us to not use his last name, had recently been talking to a woman who convinced him to make an investment. “And then one day she’s like, ‘Honey, I love you’, and I’m like ‘What?’ and she goes, ‘I have fallen in love with you’. And I said, ‘Well, I’m old enough to be your dad.’ And she said, ‘Well, that doesn’t matter. We have a lot in common,'” he said.
She also sent photos and what appears to be a sketch of herself and Jim together. Jim initially met her after getting a mysterious text message. He thought they had a friend in common. He said he wasn’t looking to date.
“She goes, ‘I’ve never met anybody to be my equal. You and I have a super lot in common.’ And she’s had an uncle who was on the board for the stock exchange in Hong Kong,” said Jim.
He was convinced to send $60,000 to invest in the stock exchange. He said he lost most of it because the investment tanked. Then, the woman opened up an overseas crypto account in his name, but when Jim tried to take that money out, he was going to be charged thousands in upfront tax fees. Experts say it’s a scam. “I figured, ‘What the heck, I’ll try somebody online. It couldn’t hurt’. I was wrong, it could,” Jim said.
“We miss micro emotions or movements in the face, so it does, does not feel exactly right,” said Adrianus Warmenhoven of NordVPN.
They confirmed that the pictures and videos are all fake or altered in some way. “You usually see that hair is not natural. Either it has this halo effect, or it blends into a different color. There are artifacts where the hair meets the background the hair looks little thick,” said Bogdan Botezatu of BitDefender.
Experts also spotted generated faces on bodies and differently shaped hands, like the hands holding up those signs saying “I love you, Jim.” “Those pictures and those handwritten notes which actually were not handwritten,” said Warmenhoven.
