The sexy AI-powered dating app scams are here
Anthropic exposed a network of roughly 28 AI-driven dating apps using autonomous personas and gig workers to defraud paying users.
Anthropic threat intelligence uncovered a fraud network of around 28 dating apps after a prepaid account sent over 100,000 Claude API requests daily, with most chats run by autonomous AI personas and no human agent. Researchers Matthew Gore-Kormanik and Anthropic's Chris Cronbaugh documented apps including Dora, Romi, and Doni, which monetize conversations via coins; gig workers were hired only to pass liveness checks and select pregenerated replies. An operations manual written in Chinese was found inside the Doni app, and Anthropic published findings in its September 2026 AI misuse report.
- AI personas operated 24/7 while gig workers passed liveness and video checks
- Apps presented themselves as human dating apps, not AI companion products
- Monetization came from coins users bought to keep chatting with bots
- Backend fabricated likes, visitors, and pre-recorded video; tracked suspicious users
- Non-Anthropic models generated reply suggestions, avatars, and photo scoring
- ATT&CK
- T1656 Impersonation
Indicators of compromise
auto-extracted · verify before use · export allAll| Type | Indicator | Context |
|---|---|---|
| domain | managedkafka.heyhru-server.cloud.goog | f the indicators listed in Anthropic’s report was “Backend. managedkafka[.]heyhru-server[.]cloud[.]goog, the operator backend hosted on Google Cloud.” Since |
From the original article
14 min read at theverge.com
Security researcher Matthew "Zigula" Gore-Kormanik was analyzing a fraudulent dating app called Dora when he got a pop-up message saying he was receiving a call from Jennifer. According to her bio, she's a 41-year-old Sagittarius with red hair, blue eyes, and piercings. She likes music, horror movies, nightlife, and sports.
By Yael Grauer · theverge.com
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