When Shelley Carr matched with a new guy on Tinder last fall who spoke eloquently about art, politics and theatre, she thought she’d found someone she could really connect with. 

“I’m sort of an artsy person. I watch theatre, and I go to plays and I go to art galleries, and so I’m looking for someone similar, right?” she said. 

“It was like we had the same interests and it’s very rare to have that happen.”

So, she asked him to meet in person to see if they’d hit it off in real life. 

But as soon as Carr saw him in person, as he got off the bus in Hamilton to meet her for their date, she had a feeling “that there’s just no way that the person I’ve been talking to was the person that got off that bus.” 

That feeling was confirmed minutes later, when Carr’s date told her that those eloquent messages weren’t written by him, but by ChatGPT.

Carr, who’s 56, said she was shocked. 

“I’ve dealt with a lot of different things, but never dealt with that.”

Carr’s story is just one example of how AI is changing online dating. But whether that’s for better or worse depends on who you talk to. 

Companies have been keen to jump on the AI bandwagon, unveiling new features using AI that promise to help users level up their dating game. But some users, particularly women, say it’s making it more difficult to tell fact from fiction, and making the quest for love more difficult as a result. 

AI tools now part of the dating app experience 

Regina Hay, a 24-year-old woman living and dating in Toronto, said she’s been using dating apps for years. But in recent months, she said it feels like the use of AI seems to be everywhere from people’s profiles to the messages they send.

This February, she said she was having a conversation with a potential date through an app that was going well, until he sent her a complex hypothesis on Spotify Wrapped that didn’t seem to be written by him. 

Hay says he admitted to using AI when she pointed out the change in tone, which made her feel cheated.

“If I wanted to have an automated conversation, I can use ChatGPT, I can get it myself. But I talked to him because I wanted to talk to that individual,” she said. 

Along with the proliferation of ChatGPT-generated messages and third party applications like RIZZ, nearly every major dating platform is incorporating AI into their apps in a bid to improve user experience and combat swipe fatigue.

WATCH | The growing frustration with dating apps:

Some young people say they’re breaking up with dating apps

Just about everything these days happens through cellphones, including dating, with users just a swipe and a match away from potentially finding a long-term partner. But some young people are breaking up with their dating apps, citing the desire to find more authentic connections and the strain of not getting the desired results.

Bumble unveiled its AI-suggested profile guidance feature in February designed to give users “personalized, actionable feedback” on their bios. Facebook also claims the AI assistant feature for its dating app can help users enhance their profiles. 

These AI tools could be effective since getting matches really hinges on how well you present yourself, said Skyler Wang, a research scientist at Handshake AI and assistant professor of sociology at McGill University who studies how digital platforms shape relationships. 

“With these generative AI tools, the idea is that you basically have a very intelligent coach or guide that can sort of help guide your on-app behavior and help you best position yourself within the ecosystem.”

Added confusion

But if people are using AI to make their profiles more appealing and craft messages, the ability to judge whether someone would be a good potential partner or not in real life gets harder. 

“The barrier to accurately detecting whether the person is genuine or whether they’re authentic is even greater now.”

That’s how Carr says she felt after finding out her date had been using ChatGPT. 

“It was just like all of the red flags that you would normally catch in a conversation were totally eliminated because he was using Chat GPT.”

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Day 69:17Flirty openers and optimized bios: How AI is transforming dating apps

Dating apps have been struggling to keep users over the past few years, so to improve the experience, nearly every major dating platform is incorporating AI to help with everything from crafting your profile, to swiping/selecting for you, to writing the perfect first message. It’s transforming the dating app industry and Stephanie Tong, a Professor of Communication Studies at Wayne State University, says it’s also having an effect on how people form relationships. 

And if everyone’s using AI to write their dating profiles, all those profiles could start to look the same, too, says Eve Tilley-Coulson, a Los Angeles-based lawyer who runs a side-business helping people optimize their dating profiles.

“It homogenizes the dating pool … and will make you more jaded and will make you less interested in going on the apps because no one’s going to stand out.”

Hall said she thinks using AI to write your profile feels dishonest. 

“I get why, but I think for me, it’s just the fact that it takes out the feeling of genuinely getting to know somebody,” she said.

“Yes, you may have told ChatGPT things to talk about and what points to say, but at the end of the day, the final piece is not your work, and it’s not your words, so it’s not going to sound like you.”

AI playing matchmaker 

Some businesses are taking the use of AI one step further by using it to function like a high-end matchmaker and bypass days or weeks worth of swiping. 

One such platform, Keeper.AI, works by asking users to fill out a long list of questions about themselves and the kind of partner they’re looking for, and then feeds that information into its algorithm to pair people up. The matches are then vetted by humans to ensure “genuine compatibility,” its website says. 

The main page of a website with the text "love at first match" and "keeper". In the bottom right corner there is text that reads "the world's more accurate matchmaker, powered by AI."The Keeper.AI website says the service offers ‘the world’s most accurate matchmaker’ that’s powered by AI. (Keeper.ai )

“We offer matches when we have very high conviction that they could lead somewhere,” says Keeper.AI CEO and founder Jake Kozloski. 

“So it’s a quality over quantity kind of thing — pretty different than, I would argue, most other products in this space.”

Kozloski argued legacy dating apps like Hinge aren’t designed to effectively help people find long-term partners because they don’t allow you to sort through potential matches based on more esoteric criteria. 

“The apps are just like spinning a slot machine when it comes to finding a long term partner, and that’s very frustrating. It’s one of the most important meaningful things any of us will do in our lives, and up until now, technology has not addressed it well,” he said. 

“That’s why I built Keeper, is to take a stab at actually building a solution that works here.”

Facebook’s AI “assistant” feature for its dating app can also be used to give people “personalized help” to find better matches. 

The assistant enables users to refine their search criteria beyond the typical traits dating app users are accustomed to, like age and education level, and enter “unique prompts” more closely tailored to what you’re looking for.

“For example, you can write ‘Find me a Brooklyn girl in tech’ and the dating assistant will help you with your search,” says a news release about the new feature. 

Tilley-Coulson said she worries using AI to play matchmaker will make online dating even less romantic than it already is. 

“I think AI is taking the gamification and commodification of love to the extreme,” she said. 

“If you’re looking for a partner who checks your boxes, it certainly will be useful at that. If you’re looking for someone you fall in love with, I think it’s going to be the furthest thing from that.”