With the help of AI, singles can find love that’s anything but artificial.
Who needs your friends to weigh in on your dating app profile when a chatbot can be your wingman? That will soon be the reality on platforms owned by Match Group, such as Tinder and Hinge, as the company unveils new AI-powered features.
According to The Guardian, Match Group’s commitment to artificial intelligence includes introducing an AI chatbot that will help singletons decide which pictures will be popular, write messages to matches and will give “effective coaching for struggling users,” who can rely on the chatbot to help guide them through conversations.
Yoel Roth, the head of trust and safety at Match Group, told The Financial Times that for “men especially,” a “big part of our safety approach is focused on driving behavioral change so that we can make dating experiences safer and more respectful.”
The chatbot will flag messages that are “off-color” and prompt the user to reconsider sending it, Roth said. According to The Financial Times, one-fifth of the people who receive the notification re-think the note.
“We think of it internally as ‘too much, too soon,’” he said.
“In the context of online dating, where young people grow up and enter the dating marketplace. . .there’s a real need and opportunity to help people understand the norms and behaviors that go along with respectful and consensual dating.”
But some critics are staunchly opposed to the integration of AI on dating apps in an “already precarious online environment,” according to The Guardian.
“Many of these companies have correctly identified these social problems,” Dr. Luke Brunning, an applied ethics lecturer at the University of Leeds, told the publication.
“But they’re reaching for technology as a way of solving them, rather than trying to do things that really de-escalate the competitiveness, [like] make it more easy for people to be vulnerable, more easy for people to be imperfect, more accepting of each other as ordinary people that aren’t all over 6ft [tall] with a fantastic, interesting career, well written bio and constant sense of witty banter.”
He added: “Most of us just aren’t like that all the time.”
Those in favor of the AI-powered wingmen argue that the extra assist mitigates the swipe fatigue and burnout that accompanies online dating.
The Guardian pointed to product manager Aleksandr Zhadan, a man who programmed ChatGPT to sift through thousands of potential matches on Tinder and found a woman who became his fiancée.
Still, Brunning expressed frustration with the absence of regulations regarding AI and dating apps, claiming they are “very similar to social media.”
“Regulators are waking up to the need to think about social media, and they’re worrying about the social impact of social media, its effect on mental health. I’m just surprised that dating apps haven’t been folded into that conversation,” he said.
“In many other respects, they’re explicitly targeting our most intimate emotions, our strongest romantic desires. They should be drawing the attention of regulators.”