McAfee said cybercriminals take advantage of the fact that people looking for love are often more susceptible to fraud by making lengthy, elaborate attempts to steal from their victims. Representative image/Twitter
An expert said the power of ChatGPT’s ability to generate “human-like” content is going to create a black box in identifying a scammer in a pool of people
As the world is about to celebrate Valentine’s Day next week, global computer security company McAfee Corp has revealed in its latest report that Indian adults are now using ChatGPT to write love letters, while 78% of Indians find it difficult to distinguish any difference between the love language written by a human and AI tool.
To understand how artificial intelligence and the internet are transforming romantic relationships, McAfee’s Modern Love research report surveyed 5,000 people in nine different countries.
The survey was conducted online between January 27 and February 1 this year via email inviting people aged 18 and over.
In India, it found that 62% of Indian people plan to use AI to help with their love letters on Valentine’s Day, while 73% are also using AI tools like ChatGPT to enhance their dating profiles.
However, the report stated that 60% of people surveyed from India preferred a computer-generated love letter written in the signature style of American poet E. E. Cummings to the author’s original 1952 poetry, “I Carry Your Heart With Me”.
It also found that 59% said they would feel more confident using AI as a ghostwriter. Other reasons included a lack of time (32%) or inspiration (26%), while 14% said it would just be faster and easier and they wouldn’t be discovered.
The risk factor
According to the report, compared to 66% globally, 89% of respondents from India reported having direct conversations with strangers on social media. It should be noted here 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 concern is that 76% of Indians confess to being catfished or know someone who has been. When someone creates a fake internet profile to trick people looking for love – usually to extort money from them – it is called catfishing.
McAfee said cybercriminals take advantage of the fact that people looking for love are often more susceptible to fraud by making lengthy, elaborate 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.
Given the amazing impact of AI tools, McAfee has asked people to carefully scrutinize any texts, emails or direct messages they receive from strangers to avoid being misled by AI-generated text.
According to the company, there are a few telltale indicators that a message was written by A, as these tools usually use short sentences and reuse the same words. Moreover, AI cannot form an opinion, so such messages can sound meaningless.
Experts involved
Amit Relan, founder and CEO of mFilterIt, told News18 that scammers who perpetrate romance/dating scams often feed off their victim’s vulnerability.
He said: “With the power of ChatGPT and its ability to generate ‘human-like’ content, it creates a black box in identifying a scammer in a pool of people.”
He also suggested that to avoid the impact of romance scams, especially during the Valentine’s Day season, people should avoid sharing personal information and money transactions with a person who sounds suspicious.
Chester Wisniewski, Field CTO Applied Research, Sophos, said: “I’ve been playing with it since its public availability in November 2022 and it’s pretty easy to convince it to help create very convincing phishing lures and respond to a conversational conversation. way that can promote romance scams and business email compromise attacks. OpenAI appears to be trying to prevent the high-risk activities from abusing its use, but the cat is now out of the bag.”
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