(Image credit: 10'000 Hours)
Seeing older relatives share obvious AI slop —like fake movie posters or martial-arts cats —is mostly just a harmless social media quirk.Unfortunately, there are much darker applications of AI targeting older adults. According to the FBI’s 2025 IC3 Annual Report, Americans aged 60 and older lost a staggering $7.7 billion to cybercrime — a 60% jump from the previous year. The damage was primarily driven by investment, crypto, tech support, and romance scams.What makes today’s fraudsters so dangerous is their technology. AI-driven tactics—such as voice cloning, deepfake videos, and hyper-realistic corporate impersonations — have made scams incredibly convincing. It’s no longer just about bad grammar; it’s about sophisticated manipulation. It's up to us to ensure our older loved ones know how to spot the new red flags.Be aware of the warning signs of romance scams
(Image credit: Shutterstock)Unfortunately, older adults are easily susceptible to romance scams. With the power of AI tools, scammers can fool them with AI-generated photos of attractive individuals, generate persuasive messages that maintain conversations over a long period of time and deepfake videos.The telltale signs that these romance scams are obvious to many of you reading this, but you may want to present them to the members of the older generation you personally know. The following warning signs of a romance scam are:A refusal to actually meet in personRepeated requests for moneyConstant claims of being caught in an emergencyPromises of financial gain through investment opportunitiesQuickly moving from innocent conversations to deep discussions about emotional intimacyHere are two other bits of guidance for the senior citizens in your life whom you want to keep safe from rampant AI scams:Assume urgency is a red flag: Scammers rely on the person on the other end of the phone panicking when presented with scary scenarios, such as their grandson needing bail money to get out of jail, their bank account being compromised or their Medicare benefits getting suspended. Unexpected requests for money, cryptocurrency, passwords, personal information and gift cards should be recognized as untrustworthy. Remaining calm in these situations and directly calling the loved one in trouble, checking one’s bank account through an official number or contacting Medicare through an official channel should be done immediately.Adopt a safe word or question that only family members can recognize: AI voice cloning is getting harder and harder to decipher between real and fake—scammers can use just a few seconds of audio from a video or audio source to generate fake voices that sound like a loved one. Coming up with a private verification phase is the key to weeding out these types of scams. While over the phone, an older adult should use that safe word or question to see if the person on the other end of the phone is legit or a complete fraud.Your suspicion should rise at the sight of a perfect-looking message
