Industrial-Scale Network of AI Dating Apps Uses Claude to Deceive Users into Paid Interactions

What happened

Anthropic and independent cybersecurity researchers uncovered a fraudulent network of around 28 dating apps (including Dora, Romi, and Doni) that deployed AI personas—powered in part by Anthropic's Claude API—to impersonate real women and deceive users into buying paid chat coins. The operation combined Claude-driven conversational agents, image generators, and paid gig workers performing video liveness checks to generate millions of deceptive messages and engage tens of thousands of paying users.

A coordinated commercial fraud network operated across major mobile app stores, defrauding tens of thousands of users through millions of deceptive AI-generated messages to extract direct payments.

Evidence excerpts

• Anthropic detected a network of approximately 28 dating apps misusing the Claude API to autonomously run fake female personas.
• The dating app network engaged at least 25,000 unique individuals across 2.36 million messages over a two-week period in April.
• The fraudulent apps charged users money for virtual currency/coins to continue chatting with automated AI personas.
• The operation combined autonomous LLM text generation with paid gig workers to handle liveness checks and circumvent user suspicion.
• Anthropic banned associated developer accounts and shared investigative intelligence with Apple and Google.

Severity dimensions

Source citations

1. The sexy AI-powered dating app scams are hereThe Verge Artificial Intelligence · 2026-09-16