AI is making everyone on dating apps sound charming. What could go wrong?

Yahoo

10 hours ago

Richard Wilson felt like he had struck gold: The 31-year-old met someone on a dating app who wanted to exchange more than the cursory 'what's up.'
He would send long, multi-paragraph messages, and she would acknowledge each of his points, weaving in details he had mentioned before. Their winding discussions fanned the romantic spark, he said, but when they recently met in person, his date had none of the conversational pizzazz she had shown over text.
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Wilson's confusion turned to suspicion when his date mentioned she used ChatGPT 'all the time' at work. Rather than stumbling through those awkward early conversations, had she called in an AI ringer?
Dating app companies such as Match Group - which owns Hinge, Tinder and a slew of other dating apps - say AI can help people who are too busy, shy or abrasive to win dates. But a growing number of singles like Wilson are finding that the influx of AI makes dating more complicated, raising questions about etiquette and ethics in a dating landscape that can already feel alienating.
With AI helping everyone sound more charming - and editing out red-flag comments before they are uttered - it's harder to suss out whether a potential partner is appealing and safe, said Erika Ettin, a dating coach who has worked with thousands of clients.
'Normally, you can see in the chat what kind of language they're using. You can see if they jump to sexual stuff quickly and how they navigate conversations with strangers in the world,' Ettin said. 'When some bot is chatting for them, you can't collect those data points on that person anymore.'
With nearly a third of U.S. adults saying they have used dating apps and the majority of relationships now beginning online, dating companies are keen to find how cutting-edge AI can bolster their business model. Hinge has added AI tools that read users' profiles and skim through their photos, suggesting changes and additions that theoretically boost their chances at a match. Tinder uses AI to read your messages, nudging you if it thinks you have sent or received something distasteful. And apps such as Rizz and Wing AI help users decide what to say to a potential date.
Amanda Gesselman, a psychologist at the Kinsey Institute, said her research with Match Group suggests that a significant chunk of singles use AI to 'enhance their dating lives.' Gesselman said the tech could help people who struggle to navigate the tricky process of swiping, matching, chatting and setting up dates. But she acknowledged the features come with ethical complications, and she struggled to articulate when using AI is acceptable and when it's deceitful.
'People will use AI to alter their photos in ways that aren't necessarily achievable for them, whereas when you use it for messages, you're using it in a way that is amplifying yourself and your ability to have conversations,' Gesselman said.
Dating app design already encourages behaviors that make courtship feel impersonal, some users say. Certain eager singles swipe right on every profile, maximizing their chances of getting a match. Others ghost, cutting off communication after a bad date rather than officially breaking things off. And many try to manipulate dating app algorithms, saying 'no' to partners they are attracted to in an attempt to signal to the algorithm that they are choosy and desirable.
Eve Tilley-Coulson, a lawyer in Los Angeles, runs a side business in which she logs in to Hinge users' accounts and swipes on their behalf, playing the algorithm to their advantage. For users already frustrated by dating apps, conversational AI features are unlikely to sit well, Tilley said. When Hinge's AI prompts her customers to write more detailed answers in their profiles, for example, some worry that the app is collecting extra data for nefarious purposes, she said. Match didn't comment about data collection.
In Tilley's view, AI features will, at worst, be weaponized against users to keep them swiping and paying. At best, they will nudge users toward more uniform answers and conversations, since generative AI tends to reference ideas and conversations it has seen before.
Match Group spokeswoman Vidhya Murugesan said the company's algorithms are designed to funnel users toward in-person connections and get them off the apps. 'As we integrate AI into our products, we're prioritizing authenticity, transparency, and safety, ensuring these tools enhance the user experience and help foster more of these connections,' she said.
If AI suggestions have a cooling effect on some dating app conversations, that's not always a bad thing, according to Yoel Roth, Match Group's head of trust and safety. Match uses AI to read users' messages and prompt them if they're about to send something potentially offensive, abusive or weird. Senders are asked, 'Are you sure?' and given an opportunity to rephrase their message. About 20 percent of people who get this prompt choose not to send the original chat, Roth said onstage at an AI conference in June. Recipients might also get a 'Does this bother you?' prompt if Match's AI perceives a message to be potentially harmful, Roth said.
'A lot of what we're thinking about as we're building apps that help people connect is: How can we use AI to improve that experience, both to make it safer and more authentic and but then also to maybe round out some of the rough edges that make it more challenging for people to meet each other and express themselves?' Roth said.
Those 'rough edges' can hobble some daters who don't have a way with words, said Roman Khaves, co-founder of the app Rizz, which bills itself as an AI-powered dating coach. Users can upload screenshots of their dating app conversations into Rizz and ask for tips on what to say next.
'AI is helping people be a little more confident in themselves and giving them that charisma,' he said. 'There's a lot of great guys out there that are not great texters, and Rizz is helping all those great guys get seen.'
Social norms around when and how it's appropriate to use AI are developing slower than the technology itself. In the workplace, where the goal is to efficiently get things done, outsourcing to AI is less ethically complex than on dating apps, where the goal is to reveal your true self, said Giada Pistilli, principal ethicist at AI company Hugging Face. The more we rely on AI to facilitate our emotional connections, the less we're able to express ourselves genuinely, she said.
'While we lack formal regulations, we do have strong moral intuitions about authenticity in intimate relationships,' Pistilli said. 'Consider how a love letter loses practically all its emotional impact once we learn it was entirely AI-generated rather than coming from the heart.'
People also want to know that when they open up to someone new, the other person is also showing their true self, said Kathryn Coduto, a professor of media science at Boston University who studies dating apps. 'If you put yourself out there but the other person is so disconnected that they're layering AI in, it feels like a mismatch.'
After meeting the woman he suspected of using ChatGPT to message him, Wilson set up a second date. Maybe with more time, he figured, he would get a glimpse of her true personality.
But he didn't like what he saw. Though he never learned for sure whether she had relied on a chatbot, the bad date made Wilson feel resentful of AI and exhausted with dating apps, he said. If this woman had been forced to write messages herself - without help from ChatGPT or Hinge alerts stopping her from sending potentially weird messages - maybe he could have determined earlier that they weren't a good pair.
They had exchanged messages for weeks, Wilson said. But who had he really been talking to?
'It's almost like we never even spoke.'
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