Ditto<\/a>, a new Bay Area startup for college students that eliminates swiping altogether. Users chat with an AI chatbot about what they’re looking for, and Ditto handles the rest.<\/p>\nEvery Wednesday at 7 p.m., a text arrives with a match and a fully planned itinerary. All you have to do is show up.<\/p>\n
Which is how, on a Friday evening in Japantown, Krause found himself meeting Angella Ferrer.<\/p>\n
“She seemed pretty interesting,” he said. “She has pretty good style.”<\/p>\n
Ditto cofounder Allen Wang says Gen Z is ready for an alternative to endless swiping. According to Wang, more than 160,000 students have already signed up, generating more than 80,000 dates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While some critics might argue that putting an algorithm in charge of matchmaking takes some of the romance out of love, Wang sees it differently.<\/p>\n
“I think the most romantic part of human connection is meeting in person. I would say we’re actually trying to push people to experience faster,” he said.<\/p>\n
Which brings us back to Owen and Angella, and whether the algorithm could deliver once the phones were put away.<\/p>\n
“Honestly, better than I expected,” Krause said.<\/p>\n
Ferrer seemed pleasantly surprised, too.<\/p>\n
“He’s very shy, but I low-key like that,” she said.<\/p>\n
Ditto is currently free, but the company says it eventually plans to charge a subscription fee.<\/p>\n
\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n
In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They say artificial intelligence is coming after everyone’s job. Apparently, that includes Cupid. For Owen Krause, a 22-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2080,101,4459,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-440078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-bay-area","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}