As is often the case with online dating platforms, the newly created service Filter Off is quickly starting to fill up with scammers seeking to blackmail real users.

The company took a rather original approach to solving the problem, apparently inspired by the solutions of anti-cheat systems for computer games. The creators of Filtr Off created a group of private chatbots and set up the system so that scammers only compete with them and other similar scammers.

Brian Weinreich, the company’s product manager, noted that there are “probably more than 1,000 scammers who only actively communicate with bots.”

Interesting details about chatbots

The company built chatbots using GPT-3, a powerful OpenAI language model that can render human text, and matched them to images of human faces generated by an AI-powered system.

Such profiles are not visible to users, but can only be used to meet company-identified scammers.

Chaos among scammers

The funny thing is, two things happen. First, the scammers face other bots, but they also encounter other scammers and try to deceive each other.

They say “I want $40 for a Google Play gift card” and the other scammer says “No, no, you’re going to give me a gift card” and they keep arguing,
– says Weinreich.

It’s worth noting that similar solutions have been used before in video games (players using cheats in online games face each other on separate servers) and even against telemarketing. But as always, scammers will undoubtedly work hard to figure out how to avoid or even take advantage of the new system.