AI enters the chaotic world of online dating. User beware

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Jack is on the search for the love of his life. He’s tried Hinge, invite-only apps, even paid for Bumble premium.

He’s now experimenting with AI.

“Give me a fun short writeup of who I am for a dating app,” Jack, a 38-year-old data science professional from San Francisco, typed into ChatGPT. Jack asked that he be referred to using a pseudonym for this article, citing his concerns about his upcoming visa renewal.

After all, the chatbot has served as Jack’s right-hand man for nearly a year, choosing his outfits, teaching him to play guitar. “The Alfred to my Batman,” he calls the tool.

Then Jack pasted ChatGPT’s answer into Hinge: “Life’s not a checklist — it’s about shared moments and growth. I’m practical, open-minded, love rock, long drives, trivia, sports, and a good laugh along the way.”

It wasn’t any help. Jack admits to a single-digit batting average on Hinge, and his AI wingman didn’t improve his stats.

Jack is among many dating app users now outsourcing at least part of the online dating process to AI. More than half of US adults under 30 have used a dating app, according to Pew Research Center, and now AI is an easily accessible tool to cut through the chaos of endless swiping and online chatter.

Dating apps are simultaneously trying to fill the gaps between online interaction and in-person meetups. Bumble is ditching the swipe for AI-driven matchmaking. Grindr is currently piloting bot-to-bot conversations to vet human dates. And Hinge is integrating AI into existing platforms, offering users personalized help with profile creation and conversation starters.

“If your end goal is to get offline and meet the love of your life, you probably want any tool that’s going to help you do that,” Jui Ramaprasad, a professor of information systems at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Others say it’s just adding another layer of technology. Dating apps have relied on algorithms for decades, and on AI since 2023, including facial recognition and improved matchmaking calculations.

“From my vantage point, all I’m seeing is, okay, it’s still algorithms matching, but humans have less agency over that process,” said Douglas Zytko, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan-Flint said.

When Franky Vergara’s cousin asked him how to respond to a flirtatious Hinge message, Vergara, a 23-year-old living in San Diego, didn’t know how to help.

“Honestly, ask ChatGPT to give you a couple ideas of what to say,” he recalled telling her.

She took his advice and sent an AI-generated message. “The message she sent didn’t have an ‘AI-vibe,’” Vergara recalled. “I think it felt more like a human-like text.”

It’s becoming increasingly common for people to use ChatGPT to open a conversation on a dating app, said Kathryn Coduto, an assistant professor of media science at Boston University. “That’s because people put a lot of pressure on the opening lines of a conversation.”

Kylee Baxa, a 23-year-old in New York, has received a few AI-generated dating app messages. Her Hinge profile has a reference to “The 100,” a science fiction show released in 2014, which led to conversations about the show and, in turn, dates.

But multiple times a date has admitted using AI to learn details about the show without having seen it, just to connect. The ploy didn’t work.

Baxa considers herself a proponent of AI but draws the line at the dating space.

“Here’s the deal: We are already losing the art of human connection in ways, like, I can’t even go up to a guy and flirt with them, and a guy can’t really feel comfortable coming up to a girl and flirting with them,” Baxa said .

“I do worry for people who have a great interaction, but it ends up being with an AI,” Coduto said. “And then when they meet the person, it’s not who they thought it was.”

Jack uploaded a bunch of his photos to ChatGPT and asked which of them would fare best on his dating profile, asking for options to portray his “fun and whimsy.”

ChatGPT suggested a few images, including one of him with a dog. The photo makes him seem “vulnerable” and “gentle,” ChatGPT said .

Overall, Jack’s experiences with AI assistance in his love life hasn’t worked. He thinks friends are more useful allies in this area of life.

Ramaprasad agrees. “Having a friend write your profile may actually elicit more of who you are and what you’re looking for than you writing it yourself,” she said.

Baxa has also been disappointed with AI-assisted dating, but the stakes feel higher. One Hinge date referred to himself as “funemployed,” which she assumed meant he was taking time to travel because the photos in his profile were in Mykonos.

“Why are all your photos in the same place?” Baxa asked her date who then admitted he’d never been to Mykonos.

“He was just like, ‘Yeah, I just used Chat to update my Hinge since I didn’t have many photos of me that weren’t selfies. Like, they’re still me. It’s still my face,” Baxa recalled him saying. She quickly ended the date.

AI may even raise a legal question of consent. If AI-generated content gives someone a misleading impression about a potential partner, what kinds of misrepresentations are significant enough to impact consent?

There isn’t a universal definition of what qualifies as informed consent to sex or intimacy, Zytko said. His concern is whether AI-generated content risks misinforming a partner’s decision to pursue intimacy if that content is misleading.

Mihir Manohar, a 32-year-old and living in New York, spent about an hour answering a long questionnaire about his dating preferences on the AI-driven dating app Amata.

In exchange, Amata’s chatbot pitched Manohar a date match: his now-girlfriend, Casey.

Amata arranged for the couple to meet at a wine bar and they hit it off. They’ve been together now for 10 months.

Before using Amata, Manohar was “completely against the traditional dating apps.” He didn’t want to swipe or submit to a dating app algorithm. He’d heard too many stories about ghosting and endless generic messages. He just wanted to go on a date.

Luis Alvarez/Digital Vision/Getty Images

This new wave of dating apps is a way for people to navigate choice overload and fatigue, Ramaprasad said.

“There’s less room for error when it comes to two people meeting,” Manohar said about Amata. “And less room for disappointment.”

New dating apps, including Amata , Sitch and Ditto , ask users dozens of questions about their values, interests , and preferences. In exchange, users are given a smaller pool of options in place of endless swiping.

Amata’s goal is to get people offline and into the real world as soon as possible, founder Ludovic Hureaux said. He suggests AI could end the loneliness epidemic , a growing public health concern fueled by rising levels of social isolation and lack of meaningful connection.

“If AI can help reconnect people in real life, it is very positive,” Hureaux said. “If AI increases the time spent online and increases this loneliness crisis, it will be bad, and we would have failed.”

Critics also worry AI will remove agency for users.

“I find it kind of terrifying,” Zytko said. “There seems to be this dominant view at big tech companies that people want the online dating experience to be automated and expedited.”

Illustration by Alberto Mier/CNN

Gen Z is outsourcing hard conversations to AI. Why it matters

To show your identity is legitimate, Coduto recommends verifying your account, which involves taking a selfie in real-time to confirm identity.

Depending on what you’re comfortable disclosing, personal details in your profile also differentiate the real from the AI. But dating apps are not largely not transparent about how personal information is stored, analyzed , and shared and require you to legally consent to sharing data.

“The mix in photos is also important,” Coduto said. “Besides an occasional filter, look for photos with friends and family or doing an activity, so things that show that you aren’t just sitting there taking a bunch of selfies.”

Looking for these details in others’ profiles can help delineate between users who are using AI to fabricate their profiles and presenting authentic personas. In messages and profiles keep an eye out for “repetitive phrases,” she said, another current sign of AI communication.

Coduto cautions against using AI in any form. As soon as online interactions move offline, your date will know, she said.

And as with any dating app, safety is always a risk.

“Using AI is by no means a reason to ignore or not perform manual safety checks and taking deliberate measures to protect yourself when you meet a stranger for the first time face to face, where there’s always that risk of physical sexual harm.” Zytko said.

And maybe AI-infused dating will have an unintended consequence. Coduto suspects an AI backlash could potentially fuel the growth of in-person dating events , such as run clubs and speed dating hours.

“I think that if these apps really push AI, people will say, ‘Well, I do have other options, and maybe I will go back to meeting people in person,’” Coduto said.

Janina Steinmetz/Digital Vision/Getty Images

杰克正在寻找真爱。他试过Hinge、需要邀请才能使用的约会软件，甚至还付费使用了Bumble高级会员。

他现在正在尝试使用人工智能。

“帮我写一段简短有趣的自我介绍，用于约会软件，”来自旧金山的38岁数据科学家杰克在ChatGPT上输入。杰克要求本文使用化名，理由是他担心即将到来的签证续签。

毕竟，这个聊天机器人已经做了杰克近一年的得力助手，帮他挑选衣服，教他弹吉他。“它就像我的蝙蝠侠身边的阿尔弗雷德，”杰克这样称呼它。

然后，杰克把 ChatGPT 的回答粘贴到了 Hinge 上：“生活不是一张清单——它关乎共同经历的时光和成长。我务实、思想开放，喜欢摇滚乐、长途自驾、冷知识、运动，以及一路上的欢笑。”

这毫无帮助。杰克承认自己在Hinge上的打击率只有个位数，而他的AI队友并没有提高他的数据。

杰克是众多将部分在线约会流程外包给人工智能的约会应用用户之一。皮尤研究中心的数据显示，超过半数的30岁以下美国成年人使用过约会应用，而如今人工智能已成为一种便捷的工具，可以帮助人们摆脱无休止的滑动和在线聊天带来的混乱。

约会软件正试图弥合线上互动和线下见面之间的鸿沟。Bumble 放弃了滑动匹配，转而采用人工智能驱动的配对系统。Grindr 目前正在试点机器人之间的对话，以筛选约会对象。而 Hinge 则将人工智能融入现有平台，为用户提供个性化的个人资料创建帮助和聊天开场白。

“如果你的最终目标是摆脱网络，遇见你生命中的挚爱，那么你可能需要任何能够帮助你实现这一目标的工具，”马里兰大学帕克分校信息系统教授朱伊·拉马普拉萨德 (Jui Ramaprasad) 说。

另一些人则认为这只是增加了一层技术。约会软件几十年来一直依赖算法，自2023年以来也开始使用人工智能，包括面部识别和改进的匹配计算。

“从我的角度来看，我看到的只是，好吧，仍然是算法匹配，但人类对这个过程的控制力越来越小，”密歇根大学弗林特分校的计算机科学教授道格拉斯·齐特科说道。

当弗兰基·维加拉的表弟问他如何回复一条调情的Hinge消息时，23岁的维加拉（居住在圣地亚哥）不知道该如何帮忙。

“说实话，你可以让 ChatGPT 给你一些话术建议，”他回忆起自己当时对她说的话。

她采纳了他的建议，发送了一条人工智能生成的短信。“她发送的短信没有‘人工智能的感觉’，”​​维加拉回忆说，“我觉得更像是人写的短信。”

波士顿大学媒体科学助理教授凯瑟琳·科杜托表示，人们越来越倾向于使用 ChatGPT 在约会软件上开启对话。“这是因为人们对对话的开场白寄予厚望。”

23岁的纽约女孩凯莉·巴克萨收到了一些人工智能生成的约会软件信息。她的Hinge个人资料中提到了2014年播出的科幻剧《地球百子》，这引发了关于这部剧的讨论，并最终促成了约会。

但有好几次，约会对象承认自己在没看过节目的情况下，利用人工智能了解节目细节，只是为了拉近彼此的距离。但这种伎俩并没有奏效。

Baxa自认为是人工智能的支持者，但她反对将人工智能应用于约会领域。

“问题是这样的：我们已经在某些方面失去了人与人之间的联系，比如，我甚至不能走过去和男生调情，男生也不能很自在地走过去和女生调情，”巴克萨说。

科杜托说：“我确实担心那些与人工智能互动体验很好的人，但最终发现互动对象是人工智能。然后当他们见到真人时，却发现对方并非他们想象中的那样。”

Jack 将自己的一堆照片上传到 ChatGPT，询问哪些照片最适合放在他的约会资料中，并询问有哪些照片可以展现他的“有趣和古怪”。

ChatGPT推荐了几张图片，其中一张是他和一只狗的合影。ChatGPT说，这张照片让他看起来“脆弱”又“温柔”。

总的来说，杰克在爱情生活中借助人工智能的经验并不成功。他认为朋友在这方面才是更有用的盟友。

拉玛普拉萨德对此表示赞同。“让朋友帮你写个人简介，可能比你自己写更能展现你的个性和择偶标准，”她说。

Baxa也对人工智能辅助约会感到失望，但她觉得风险更大。她在Hinge上遇到的一位约会对象自称“无所事事”，她猜测他可能是在旅行，因为他个人资料里的照片是在米科诺斯岛拍的。

“为什么你的照片都放在同一个地方？”巴克萨问她的约会对象，对方这才承认他从未去过米科诺斯岛。

“他当时就说，‘是啊，我刚用聊天软件更新了我的Hinge照片，因为我除了自拍之外没多少照片。不过，照片里的人还是我，脸还是我的。’”巴克萨回忆道。她随即结束了这次约会。

人工智能甚至可能引发关于同意的法律问题。如果人工智能生成的内容给某人对潜在伴侣产生了误导性的印象，那么哪些类型的误导足以影响同意权？

Zytko表示，目前对于何为知情同意发生性行为或亲密关系并没有统一的定义。他担心的是，如果人工智能生成的内容具有误导性，是否会误导伴侣做出是否要发生亲密关系的决定。

32 岁的 Mihir Manohar 居住在纽约，他在人工智能驱动的约会应用程序 Amata 上花了大约一个小时回答了一份关于他的约会偏好的长篇问卷。

作为交换，Amata 的聊天机器人为 Manohar 推荐了一位约会对象：他现在的女朋友 Casey。

阿玛塔安排这对情侣在一家酒吧见面，他们一见如故。现在他们已经在一起10个月了。

在使用Amata之前，Manohar“完全反对传统的约会软件”。他不想滑动屏幕，也不想受制于约会软件的算法。他听过太多关于被“放鸽子”和没完没了的千篇一律的信息的故事。他只想去约会。

Luis Alvarez/Digital Vision/Getty Images

拉玛普拉萨德表示，这股新一波约会应用程序浪潮是人们应对选择过多和疲劳的一种方式。

“两个人见面，出错的余地就小，”马诺哈尔谈到阿玛塔时说，“失望的几率也小。”

包括Amata、Sitch和Ditto在内的新型约会应用会询问用户数十个关于其价值观、兴趣和偏好的问题。作为交换，用户可选择的约会对象范围会缩小，而不是像以前那样无休止地滑动屏幕。

Amata 的创始人 Ludovic Hureaux 表示，Amata 的目标是让人们尽快脱离网络，回归现实世界。他认为，人工智能可以终结孤独症的流行——孤独症是一个日益严重的公共卫生问题，其根源在于社会隔离程度的加剧和人际交往的匮乏。

“如果人工智能能够帮助人们在现实生活中重新建立联系，那当然是件好事，”休罗说。“但如果人工智能增加了人们上网的时间，加剧了孤独危机，那就糟了，我们就失败了。”

批评人士还担心人工智能会剥夺用户的自主权。

“我觉得这有点可怕，”齐特科说。“大型科技公司似乎普遍认为，人们希望在线约会体验能够自动化、快速化。”

插图：Alberto Mier/CNN

Z世代正在将棘手的对话外包给人工智能。这为什么重要？

为了证明您的身份合法，Coduto 建议您验证您的帐户，这需要您实时拍摄自拍照以确认身份。

根据你愿意透露的信息，个人资料中的个人信息也能区分真人与人工智能。但约会应用在个人信息的存储、分析和共享方面大多不够透明，而且通常需要你合法同意才能共享数据。

科杜托说：“照片的组合也很重要。除了偶尔使用滤镜之外，还要寻找与朋友和家人一起拍摄的照片，或者一起进行活动的照片，这样才能展现出你不仅仅是坐在那里拍一堆自拍。”

在其他人的个人资料中寻找这些细节，有助于区分使用人工智能伪造个人资料的用户和展现真实自我的用户。她表示，在消息和个人资料中，要留意“重复出现的短语”，这是目前人工智能通信的另一个迹象。

科杜托警告说，不要以任何形式使用人工智能。她说，一旦线上互动转移到线下，你的约会对象就会察觉到。

和其他约会软件一样，安全始终是一个风险。

“使用人工智能绝不是忽视或不进行人工安全检查以及在第一次与陌生人面对面见面时采取谨慎措施保护自己的理由，因为始终存在遭受性侵犯的风险。” Zytko说道。

人工智能约会或许会带来意想不到的后果。科杜托认为，人们对人工智能的抵触情绪可能会推动线下约会活动的增长，例如跑步俱乐部和快速约会。

“我认为，如果这些应用程序真的推动了人工智能的发展，人们会说，‘好吧，我还有其他选择，也许我会重新开始与人面对面交流，’”科杜托说。