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
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 person
- Repeated requests for money
- Constant claims of being caught in an emergency
- Promises of financial gain through investment opportunities
- Quickly moving from innocent conversations to deep discussions about emotional intimacy
Here 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
As I mentioned before, AI tools can generate perfect-looking messages that are used by scammers to send texts and emails that look legit to unsuspecting senior citizens.
While it’s harder to find clear examples of spelling errors and obvious grammar mistakes, there are still a few ways you can tell that a seemingly perfect message is an AI scam.
Those examples include:
- Unexpected requests for money, login details or deeply personal information
- Pressure tactics meant to push the person reading it to act quickly
- Strange links that could get someone caught up in a phishing scam
- Requests to move conversations off trusted platforms and onto less secure ones
Be sure to keep these three other tips in mind when it’s time to have a conversation with your older loved ones about steering clear of AI scams:
- Limit the amount of personal information you post through social media: Scammers who rely on AI can pull all sorts of personal details, visual likenesses and voice recordings through social media from all the information people post about themselves, the photos they make public and the videos they make available for everyone to see. Telling the older ones in your circle to limit the public visibility of those bits of data and refraining from sharing any info about future vacation plans are the best ways to stay safe in this regard.
- Pay attention to the telltale signs of “AI slop”: Older folks and people in general are being bombarded by pictures and videos that look all too real. But upon close inspection, they can be recognized as fakes generated by AI. Humans sporting extra fingers, garbled text, weird mouth movements and unnaturally smooth faces & objects are clear evidence of AI-generated photos and videos. Make sure your older loved ones don’t get caught by a deepfake video of a celebrity asking them for money.
- Have conversations about fraud prevention: It’s easy to feel embarrassed when one gets caught up in a sophisticated AI scam. Opening a healthy dialogue with your older loved ones about recent scams, suspicious phone calls, strange emails and emerging AI threats they may have been targeted by should make them feel more comfortable alerting you about any other suspicious activity that comes their way.
Bottom line
Internet scams were already a massive problem, especially for those in the later years of their life. And with the ever-evolving AI tools being exposed to the mainstream, scammers have tapped into them to make their attempts at exploiting senior citizens so much easier. Make sure to keep these tips in mind when it’s time to sit down with the older folks in your family so they don’t become the latest victims of a scam powered by AI.
