LISBON, Portugal, Feb. 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Humanity Protocol, a technology startup building the internet’s trust layer, has conducted a social experiment demonstrating how artificial intelligence can be used to create convincing fake profiles, bypass identity verification on a major dating platform, and manipulate real people at scale. The findings raise urgent questions about the effectiveness of Know Your Customer (KYC) systems in the age of generative AI and how such vulnerabilities can be exploited by bad actors.
From ideation to execution, the social experiment ran over a two-month period, from October to December 2025, and involved six Humanity Protocol team members. The team used publicly available AI tools such as Reve AI, ChatGPT, Nanobanana, and Midjourney to generate four unique profiles on Tinder, including profile photos and bios (see Appendix). In order to maintain profiles’ activity on the platform, Humanity Protocol used TinderGPT on GitHub to keep up with over 100 simultaneous conversations with real users on the dating app. While the accounts were created in a number of different countries, including Portugal, Spain, Serbia, Indonesia, and Thailand, all of them have set their location to Portugal, using Tinder Gold. Over the course of the experiment, the fake profiles interacted with 296 real Tinder users and ultimately convinced 40 individuals to agree to go on a date.
In a deliberate and ethical twist, the experiment concluded at a restaurant in Lisbon, Portugal. All participants were informed of the experiment upon arrival and were treated to dinner by the startup. No financial or emotional harm was intended or inflicted, and the company emphasized that the goal was to highlight systemic vulnerabilities rather than take advantage of them. A full overview of the experiment can be watched on the company’s social pages.
“This was not about tricking people for fun,” said Terence Kwok, Founder of Humanity Protocol. “It was about stress-testing systems we all rely on and showing how easily trust can be manufactured when AI is involved. If a small team can do this as an experiment, imagine what coordinated bad actors could achieve with malicious intent.”
The experiment underscores a growing challenge across digital platforms: traditional KYC methods were designed for a pre-generative-AI world. Photo verification, basic liveness checks, and document uploads are increasingly insufficient when AI can produce hyper-realistic images, voices, and behaviors that mimic real humans.
In the context of dating apps, the consequences may seem limited to wasted time or emotional manipulation. Yet, Americans lost more than $1.3 billion to romance scams in 2022, making it the highest reported loss category among all consumer fraud types, according to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. As AI capabilities accelerate, the line between harmless experimentation and large-scale fraud is thinning rapidly. Without stronger, adaptive KYC frameworks that can prove humanity, not just identity, digital platforms risk becoming fertile ground for the next generation of AI-driven fraud.
About Humanity Protocol
Humanity is the trust layer of the internet. It enables users to prove any facts about themselves with portable and private credentials. Through our Proof-of-Trust network, anyone can verify identity, eligibility, or access without revealing private data. It replaces assumptions with credentials, creating a safer, more trusted digital world.
For more information, please visit https://www.humanity.org/
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