Dating apps have spent years telling us to trust our instincts while simultaneously asking us to swipe through an endless buffet of strangers with professionally lit selfies, suspiciously vague bios, and an uncanny willingness to fall in love after three messages. These days, plenty of people won’t even hand out their real phone number until date three, opting for a Google Voice number instead and keeping safety apps like Noonlight on standby just to survive modern dating. And honestly, they’re not being paranoid—romance scams have become a billion-dollar business.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, Americans lost $1.14 billion to romance scams in 2023, and those losses have continued climbing as scammers get better at using AI, fake identities, and increasingly convincing social engineering tactics.
Now luxury dating platform Seeking.com says it’s tired of pretending the problem is unsolvable. The company announced a new anti-fraud initiative that does something almost no dating platform has publicly embraced. It plans to expose the faces of would-be romance scammers caught trying to infiltrate the site using AI-powered identity verification and selfie checks before they ever reach real users.
Seeking.com being the Batman of dating? We’re here for it.
And, here’s a question to other dating apps: If fraud can be stopped earlier, why aren’t the rest of you doing it?
Most dating apps focus on removing fake accounts after users report them. It already sounds flawed. Why do daters have to do the hard work here?
On Seeking’s platform, every new member goes through an AI-assisted selfie verification process designed to confirm they’re a real person instead of someone hiding behind stolen photos or AI-generated profile pictures. The system also analyzes behavioral patterns and other signals associated with fraudulent accounts. According to Seeking, more than 90 percent of scammers are blocked before they ever begin messaging members. But, this isn’t new for this dating app.
The newest upgrade is that the company will publicly showcase images of scammers caught during that verification process as a way of demonstrating just how frequently fraud attempts happen. It sounds like they’re hoping to pressure on the broader dating industry to taking stronger action, too.
Seeking co-CEO Brandon Wade framed the initiative as an industry-wide challenge, arguing that romance scams shouldn’t simply be accepted as an inevitable cost of online dating. The company says modern AI tools make it possible to identify many fraudulent users earlier in the signup process, provided platforms are willing to prioritize safety.
If you’ve ever rolled your eyes and thought, I’d never fall for that, congratulations—you’ve apparently become the exact person scammers hope to meet.
Seeking recently published a blog explaining that romance scams don’t primarily target gullible people. Instead, scammers often rely on psychology, emotional manipulation, and carefully crafted trust-building that can fool educated, successful people just as easily as anyone else. Victims are typically manipulated over weeks or months before money ever enters the conversation.
That’s become even easier in the AI era, where fake profile photos, deepfake videos, and convincing chatbots are lowering the barrier for scammers to create believable identities.
In addition to using a trusted platform to find partners, Seeking provides the following tips on their blog to daters:
If you’re not already familiar, Seeking launched in 2006 as SeekingArrangement, which honestly was giving sugar baby/sugar daddy vibes. They’ve eventually rebranded into the Seeking you know today. The company now explicitly prohibits sugar dating, compensated companionship, and transactional relationships under its community rules. Seeking aims to now be a platform for “intentional relationships.” That means, don’t try to find a pay day here, sugar babies. And sugar daddies, find your sidepieces and arm candy elsewhere.
Think less “infinite doom-scrolling while lying horizontally in bed” and more “dating with your LinkedIn energy.” Seeking now describes itself as a dating platform for ambitious, career-driven singles who want partners with similar goals, lifestyles, and expectations. Instead of emphasizing endless swiping, the platform leans heavily on search filters, verified identities, and detailed profiles intended to encourage more deliberate matching. Members are encouraged to be upfront about what they’re looking for rather than playing the usual “pretend you’re chill until six months in” dating game. It’s giving Match.com energy but more innovative for 2026.
The company says its community is geared toward people who value:
So if your dating philosophy is “let’s see where it goes lol,” this probably isn’t your natural habitat. Based on how the platform describes itself, Seeking makes the most sense for daters who are tired of swipe-heavy dating apps, paranoid about weirdos and want the filter of verified profiles and stronger identity checks, and looking for a more curated dating experience.
If you’re mostly interested in collecting matches you’ll never message, your phone already has six other apps for that. Don’t even lie.
Eh, we remain bruised and jaded, so probably not. AI can’t stop ghosting, situationships, breadcrumbing, or the person who says they’re “emotionally unavailable” after planning your hypothetical wedding two weeks earlier. (Don’t be that person either, by the way.) But identifying fake identities before they reach real users? That’s one area where AI may genuinely make a difference, so we’re glad Seeking is leveraging the tech.
Whether other dating platforms follow Seeking’s lead remains to be seen. But as AI-generated identities become easier to create—and romance scams continue costing Americans billions—the pressure to improve verification isn’t likely to disappear anytime soon.
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