How to spot phishing, romance, and other scams in the age of AI

5:00 AM · July 18, 2026

Generative AI is turbocharging online scams targeting people's finances, careers, and dating lives, according to Bloomberg, tilting the balance back toward scammers after years of public awareness campaigns had made many classic red flags, like poor grammar or obviously fake photos, easier for people to spot. The ability to instantly generate slick, convincing text, lifelike images, and passable fake websites means the sheer volume of online deception is growing, while the individual scams themselves have become harder to distinguish from genuine communication. Bloomberg's reporting includes a case in which a woman described receiving unprompted, chatty emails claiming to be from a well known author offering to help her career, messages that felt personal and plausible enough that they never triggered the usual too good to be true suspicion, until it became clear the messages were fabricated. The piece frames the shift as a meaningful change in the underlying economics of running a scam: AI has lowered the cost and effort required to produce large volumes of personalized, convincing deception, while the tells that used to help people spot a scam quickly, like awkward phrasing or generic mass produced messaging, are disappearing. The reporting offers practical guidance for readers on adjusting their own skepticism now that fluent, personalized, and visually convincing communication is no longer reliable evidence that a message is genuine.