AI to aid in a new wave of Relationship and investment scams in 2026 says Trend Micro

As we wind down the year, Trend Micro are looking ahead, releasing their 2026 Consumer Security Predictions Report, with findings that scammers will increasingly leverage AI to try and stay ahead.

The report covers numerous ways that scammers are expected to attempt to deceive new victims in the coming year, with AI enabling a multi-faceted approach to scams in an attempt to increase revenue – with scams resulting in an estimated $442 billion USD globally last  year. 

Relationship and investment scams will be key areas of interest for scammers in the coming year, with AI allowing them to leverage deepfakes and “agentic AI” to make scams look and sound real, as well as allowing them to scale up the amount of attacks. 

These AI-generated personas include cloned voices, allowing them to build synthetic relationships across multiple channels including social media and text messages before luring victims into encrypted chats and fraudulent payment pages.

Trend Micro also see crypto-related investment and instant payment fraud expanding, with crypto-related scammers using scam-as-a-service networks while peer-to-peer money apps and irreversible transfers will enable an increase in instant payment fraud.

Ashley Millar, Director of Consumer Education at Trend Micro said:
“Today, AI is transforming how scams are created and delivered, making them more convincing, more prolific and harder to recognise. In fact, nearly half of Australians say they encounter AI-generated content very frequently or constantly online, blurring the cues people once relied on to spot something suspicious. The challenge ahead is ensuring consumers have the awareness, skills and tools to verify what they see before they act, so they can protect themselves from today’s modern digital threats.”

While AI will drive a lot of the scams in the coming year, Trend Micro also recognised that impersonation scams, targeting delivery, billing, and subscription renewal fraud, will still remain a high vector of attack for scammers around the globe.

These scams are getting even more indistinguishable from real communications from legitimate sources, with scammers using professional grade branding and AI to phase out bad grammar and spelling, as well as ‘smishing kits’ – SMS phishing – to gain your data through deception.

To mitigate efforts including multi-channel fraud, Trend Micro’sScamCheck tool, which allows users to instantly verify any number of suspicious texts, links, social messages, and phone numbers, stopping scammers in their tracks. 

The tool analyses a variety of inputs including impersonation patterns, risky URLs, and behavioural cues which Trend Micro sees commonly in delivery, billing, investment, and relationship scams – with the tool helping users to spot AI-engineered or highly polished scams.

If you want to read more about what to keep your eye out for, you can find the Trend Micro 2026 Consumer Security Predictions Report on their website.