Love in the time of AI has a dark side

As the world is about to celebrate this year’s Valentine’s Day next week, the global computer security company McAfee Corp in its latest report has revealed that Indian adults are now using ChatGPT to write love letters, while 78% of Indians are finding it difficult to discern any difference between the love language written by a human and AI tool.

In order to understand how artificial intelligence and the internet are transforming romantic relationships, McAfee’s Modern Love research report questioned 5,000 people in nine different nations.

The survey was conducted online between January 27 and February 1 this year via email inviting people 18 years and older.

In India, it found that 62% of Indian people plan to utilise AI to assist with their Valentine’s Day love letters, while 73% also use AI tools like ChatGPT to improve their dating profiles.

However, the report stated that 60% of surveyed people from India preferred a computer-generated love letter written in American poet EE Cummings’s signature style to the author’s original 1952 poetry, “I Carry Your Heart With Me”.

It was also found that 59% claimed they would feel more confident if they used AI as a ghostwriter. Other reasons included a lack of time (32%) or inspiration (26%), while 14% said it would simply be quicker and easier and they wouldn’t be discovered.

The risk factor

As per the report, compared to 66% globally, 89% of respondents from India reported having direct talks with strangers on social media. Here it should be noted that there are three platforms that foreigners are most likely to use to contact Indian adults: Facebook (51%), WhatsApp (59%), and Instagram (64%).

But the worry is that 76% of Indians confess to having been catfished or knowing someone who has been. When someone creates a false internet profile to deceive people looking for love—usually to extort money from them—it is known as catfishing.

McAfee said that cybercriminals take advantage of the fact that people looking for love are frequently more susceptible to fraud by making prolonged, intricate attempts to steal from their victims.

The survey found that 76% of Indian respondents who have interacted with strangers online are requested to send money.

Considering the astonishing impact of AI tools, McAfee has asked people to carefully examine any texts, emails, or direct messages they receive from strangers and they may prevent being duped by AI-generated text.

According to the company, there are a few telltale indicators that a message was authored by A, such as these tools usually use short sentences and reuse the same words. Additionally, AI can’t form opinions, so such messages may sound substance-less.

Experts concerned

Amit Relan, Founder and CEO of mFilterIt, told News18 that scamsters executing romance/dating scams often feed on the vulnerability of their victim.

He said: “With the power of ChatGPT and its capability to generate ‘human-like’ content is going to create a black box in identifying a scamster in a pool of humans.”

He also suggested that to avoid the impact of romance scams, especially during Valentine’s season, people must avoid sharing any personal information and monetary transactions with a person who sounds suspicious.

Chester Wisniewski, Field CTO Applied Research, Sophos, said: “I have been playing with it since its public availability in November of 2022 and it is quite easy to convince it to assist with creating very convincing phishing lures and responding in a conversational way that could advance romance scams and business email compromise attacks. OpenAI seems to be trying to limit the high-risk activities from abusing its use, but the cat is now out of the bag.”

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