News Artificial Intelligence on Dating Apps: Clever Hacker or Catfish?

One of those conversations led to a woman asking him out — an invitation he declined, Riera said. In a YouTube video he posted last fall, he said his effort was a social experiment and shared snippets of his chats. (In many cases, the AI ​​kicks things off by asking, “Are we married now?”) Mr. Riera has also made his code public for people to test, as they’re looking for ways to facilitate small talk are usually losers.

“No one likes ‘hey,'” says Jordana Abraham, 33, co-founder of Betches Media. “It’s like a generic cover letter that’s not specific to your company. Like, do you even care?

As the host of the Betches dating podcast “U Up?”, Ms. Abraham’s team gathers a wealth of information each week from listeners seeking relationship advice. A lot of people are trying to figure out how to secure a date, she said. Actually making plans — leaving the app and entering the real world — “feels like the most tiresome part of dating,” she says.

Anthony Riera’s AI-generated Tinder profile. Courtesy of Anthony Riera

Over the years, dating apps have added new features to help. Conversational assistive features, such as chat catalyzing text prompts and questions, have become standard for some apps. But programmers and entrepreneurs now think artificial intelligence and chatbots could be the next frontier for dating apps — and they’re testing their hypotheses.

Outside of their full-time tech jobs, data scientists Dmitri Mirakyan, 28, and Jeffrey Li, 30, have developed an “AI-generated flirting support” tool called Your Move. It offers people “flirtatious,” “funny,” and “official” messages or replies based on user-provided information or screenshots.

Mr. Mirakyan said Your Move is designed to energize early conversations that can feel dull and tedious. “It was kind of exhausting because it was never that much fun,” he said. “I’m not particularly good at flirting. In some ways, I feel like I’m colorblind — I can’t see the signals other people are sending each other.”

Your Move suggests opening lines and replies for in-app conversations. Look up “flirty intros” on Your Move for suggestions as a starter: “Hey, hello. I couldn’t help but notice you from across the room and wanted to come over to say hi. Can I buy you a drink?” Development Those messages are a starting point, and most people make adjustments before hitting send, people said.

A startup called Keys AI has raised $3 million from investors, positioning itself to help singles who might want to connect but struggle to find the right words.

By downloading the iOS app, Keys users can install a keyboard on their phone that works much like the Emoji keyboard. Users must first agree to grant Keys “full access” to their phone’s keypad. From there, they can select messages for common scenarios — starting a conversation, rescheduling a date, breaking up with someone — or upload a screenshot of the conversation, and Keys will suggest a reply.

These recommendations read like a bag of pick-up wires. The flirtatious openers generated by the keyboard for free include: “Based on your profile, you’re very attractive. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” and “Score yourself: From 1 to My Pillow CEO, what a good guy you are hugger?”

“It’s about sharing words through humor, emotion or stories to spark intimacy,” says Keys co-founder and CEO Taylor Margot, 36. “If you can’t do that, You wouldn’t have online dating success.”

More advanced scenarios, such as breakup lines, are part of Keys’ premium subscription, which costs $14.99 per month, or $44.99 for six months, and includes a human dating coach.

All of these tools rely on artificial intelligence models from Open AI, the research lab behind the popular chatbot ChatGPT.

Cassie Meschke, 21, learned about the company when a representative for the company reached out to her for a sponsored post on TikTok, where she has more than 16,000 followers fan. She said yes.

“I guess it would help if you didn’t have the game, but like, it’s creepy,” she said of the AI ​​flirting in a TikTok video she shared in December. Mr Margot said she was one of several TikTok celebrities Case had approached.

Ms. Meschke, a student in Tampa, Fla., declined to say how much she was paid for the position. Using an app like Keys, she says, is like a form of fishing for her and can lead to disappointing first dates.

“Let’s say you meet in person, and then they’re not like that. For me, that would be, number one, a waste of my time, and number two, that’s not someone I’m interested in on the phone,” she said in an interview Say. Plus, she said, the app’s recommendations seemed more geared toward heterosexual men than women. “A lot of the response was like, ‘You look beautiful,'” she said.

Mr Margot acknowledged the shortcomings of artificial intelligence in this regard. “Large language models like GPT-3 are far from perfect,” he said. “We didn’t create the problem, but I believe we have a responsibility to try to fix it.”

While suitors have relied on Cyrano types for centuries to find the right words, romantic help from computer software is even more disturbing. Mr Margot said perceptions of artificial intelligence were changing. “Under modern norms, I can see how someone would find it creepy,” he said. “But I think it’s more important to ask, ‘Can we help more people communicate better and find connections, faster?'”

Ms. Meschke, who uses Hinge, estimates that only a quarter of matches actually lead to a conversation.

Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist who served as Match.com’s scientific advisor for 17 years, said she sees the tools as a new attempt at solving an age-old problem. “Forever, people worry about what to say,” she said. “I just don’t think in the long run, any kind of artificial booster is going to last long enough for you to walk down the aisle with someone.”

“Once you meet,” she adds, “your brain just works like it always has.”

Write to Sara Ashley O’Brien at sara.obrien@wsj.com