Highlights
This summer, the Senate Special Committee on Aging held a hearing that exposed the threat of AI-based fraud to older Americans. Heartbreaking testimony by Deborah Del Mastro, a mother who was scammed out of thousands of dollars by criminals pretending to have captured her daughter, and Dr. David Amron, a medical doctor whose likeness was used to scam patients into buying fake medical products, personalized a growing social and largely invisible crisis.
Harrowing stories like these underscore the immense need for federal action and coordination to address AI-driven fraud. Yet, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-NY) remarks to the committee challenged lawmakers to go even further—to consider the impacts of AI on older adults beyond isolated scams. Echoing Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical letter on artificial intelligence, Magnifica Humanitas, Gillibrand noted that “technology is never neutral—the same tools that connect us can also be turned against the most vulnerable among us.” She called on Congress to heed the Pope’s warning by “putting human dignity first and protecting the most vulnerable, including older adults.”
Gillibrand is right. Congress needs to fight for the dignity of older Americans who are being experimented on in novel ways by AI. This crisis goes far beyond scams. Today, AI is not just being used by criminals to extort older Americans; it’s being foisted on them by tech companies, caretakers, and healthcare services to fill relational gaps and curtail the demands of dependence.
Congress needs to fight for the dignity of older Americans who are being experimented on in novel ways by AI.
Such foisting is often framed in terms of addressing loneliness and isolation, an increasing problem for aging populations. According to the University of Michigan’s National Poll on Healthy Aging (NPHA), in 2023, more than a third of Americans between 50 and 80 reported feeling isolated (34%) or a lack of companionship (37%). Both of these percentages are higher than pre-pandemic levels of loneliness amongst the same population.
As children, relatives, and neighbors spend less time with their elders and institutional caretakers are strapped for personnel, tech companies are developing and marketing high-powered AI to fill the gaps. One company, InTouch AI, offers a virtual AI service that will call users and ask detailed personalized questions about their day, health, or past, often informed by previous conversations with the AI. Other AI devices for the aging, like ElliQ, are placed in a room and programmed to “read” the mood of users. The devices are designed to initiate interactions and conversation, including jokes and breath work.
AI products seem to be abating elderly loneliness. While older users know AI companions aren’t human and may be skeptical at first, many warm up to them and report feeling less lonely. As ElliQ Founder and CEO Dor Skuler noted, “The first humans that actually live with an AI and are building a long-term relationship are not like geeks in Silicon Valley. It is older adults in the United States.”
But relying on AI to fill relational and caretaking gaps exposes older populations to serious risks. Last year, one of Meta’s AI companions convinced 76-year-old “Bue” Wongbandue into thinking it was a real person and invited him to travel across state lines to meet in real life. Bue left never to return home—he died after slipping and falling on his journey. The same year, 75-year-old Joe Riley died after refusing cancer treatment because of health advice provided by AI.
These aren’t isolated cases of elderly dependence on AI. The number of Americans ages 50 and older using AI nearly doubled between 2024 to 2025, according to AARP. Similarly, the University of Michigan’s 2025 NPHA survey found that 55% of Americans between the ages of 50 to 80 are using AI today, with 12% using AI for “social connections” and 14% using it for some kind of health information.
Relying on AI to fill relational and caretaking gaps exposes older populations to serious risks.
AI-induced tragedies and reliance among older loved ones matches what many families and policymakers have already learned in other contexts. As currently designed, many AI products lack the protocols needed to protect users from dependence and manipulation. If we want this to change, AI companies need to be held legally accountable for unsafe design and the harms their products cause.
Thankfully, some lawmakers are tackling these subtler problems. Last month, Senators Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Jim Justice (R-WV), both of whom sit on the Senate Special Committee on Aging, introduced the Senior Chatbot Protection Act. The bipartisan legislation requires companies to provide detection and safety protocols for users in crisis and prohibits AI-generated advice on “high stakes” decisions, amongst other protections.
In the age of AI, such bills are critical. Still, it’s important for lawmakers to keep in mind that older Americans may not be turning to AI because they necessarily want to, but because they likely have nowhere else to go. Congress and civil society should work together to protect American families, including their aging loved ones, from the negative consequences of AI usage. We must also ensure that older Americans remain free to access real, human care in order to age with dignity.
In the words of Sen. Gillibrand:
The question before us is not whether AI will transform our society. It certainly will. The question is whether we let it be turned against the people we love.
Let’s make sure we don’t.
Jared Hayden is a Policy Analyst for the IFS Family First Tech Initiative.
*Photo credit: Shutterstock
