In an effort to protect older adults from artificial intelligence scams, the Senate Special Committee on Aging is asking the nation’s top AI companies what safeguards they have in place for at-risk users.
US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), ranking member of the Senate Aging Committee, and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a committee member, sent letters to the CEOs of nine AI companies — OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Anthropic, Perplexity AI, X, Meta, Luka, Inc., and Character Technologies Inc. — last week, requesting information about safeguards on their AI chatbot companions for older adults, people with disabilities and people in crisis.
Specifically, the letter asks how AI companion products are tested, how the companies trace adverse events and harms involving AI products, what safeguards that are built into AI companion products to protect older adults, whether older adults are included in the development of AI products, and whether companies provide independent researchers access to data to study the effects of AI products on older adults and people with disabilities.
The senators gave the companies until Aug. 31 to respond.
The letter follows a committee hearing Gillibrand and Chairman Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) held last week to examine the ways that the use of AI has led to an increase in financial scams against older adults.
“AI has supercharged financial scams against seniors, making them more convincing, more deceptive and easier to pull off,” Gillibrand said in a statement.
During the hearing, experts and victims discussed how AI has fueled an “alarming and highly complex rise” in fraud.
“The rise of artificial intelligence has offered scammers new tools to pursue their criminal schemes, and we must adapt and respond to these new threats,” Scott said during the hearing. “AI has made existing scams more effective and lowered the barrier to entry for criminals.”
Resources and recommendations
At the hearing, the Aging Committee released a new report detailing the ways that AI can be used to both perpetrate and help detect scams against older adults. The publication also includes resources and calls for additional education to help older adults protect themselves from new AI threats.
The committee called the scope of victimization from AI-based fraud schemes in the nation “staggering,” pointing to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center identifying almost $21 billion in cybercrime losses in 2025, with $893 million tied to AI-enabled scams.
The report also highlighted the benefits of emerging technologies, including the use of AI to reduce administrative burdens in healthcare, improve clinical outcomes, extend independent living for older adults, and combat loneliness.
“Harnessing the promise of artificial intelligence for older Americans while protecting them from its misuse is paramount,” the report read. “Protecting seniors from AI-enabled fraud and expanding their access to AI-assisted care are not competing priorities; they are two sides of the same obligation.”
Although the Senate’s special committees have no legislative authority, they can study issues, conduct oversight of programs and advance causes.
Among the policy recommendations in the report:
- Enact the No Fakes Act of 2026, which would create a federal right prohibiting the creation or hoisting of AI-generated replicas of a person’s voice, image or likeness without their consent.
- Pass the National Strategy for Combating Scams Act, which would require the FBI to develop a unified national strategy incorporating input from victims, law enforcement, nonprofits and the private sector.
- Enact the Guarding Unprotected Aging Retirees from Deception, or GUARD, Act, which would expand existing federal grant programs to fund specialized law enforcement training on elder fraud, and incorporate technology tools to follow stolen cryptocurrency.
- Pass the Reportscams.gov Act, which would establish a centralized federal portal where consumers can report scams, access information about assistance and have their submissions automatically routed to the right federal and state law enforcement agencies.
- Reduce the stigma of reporting fraud and use existing fraud education resources.
- Enact the Tax Relief for Victims of Crimes, Scams and Disasters Act, which would restore the tax deduction for personal casualty and theft losses, allowing victims of crime and unexpected, uninsurable disasters to deduct their losses.
- Pass the Improving Seniors’ Timely Access to Care Act, which would codify electronic prior authorization standards for Medicare Advantage plans and require faster turnaround times on authorization requests.
- Enact the Aging with Artificial Intelligence Act, which calls for federal research into how AI tools, including chatbots and voice assistants, affect older Americans.
- Support reauthorization of the Older Americans Act.
A recently released study from Human Cybersecurity Knowledge for Seniors shared that older adults reported almost $8 billion in internet-enabled fraud losses (not just those related to AI) in 2025, up 59% from 2024. The report used data sets from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Senate Aging Committee’ annual fraud report to paint a broader picture of elder fraud in America.
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