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. The romantic Turing Test 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.” Tricking others to go on a date 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. Can AI dating apps solve the loneliness epidemic? 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. 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.” Protecting yourself in the age of AI-enhanced online dating 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.
