“On Tinder, around thirty women interacted with artificial intelligence when they thought they were chatting with me.” Anis Ayari is an artificial intelligence engineer and YouTuber. On his Defend intelligence channel, he deciphers trends linked to new technologies. Latest test for the videographer: knowing whether “yes or no”, an artificial intelligence like ChatGPT – the now famous conversational robot from OpenAI – can flirt credibly on a dating application like Tinder. A function that is still non-existent on most of these sites.
To carry out this experiment, the engineer programmed the messaging in his Tinder profile so that it was connected to ChatGPT and it was he who chatted with the women in the application. “I didn’t let him chat for more than 24 hours with the users in question. After this time, I warned them that they had spoken with an AI,” explains Anis Ayari. “I then asked them if they had noticed it. Of the ten who agreed to answer me, none had noticed it,” underlines the videographer. In total, there are nearly thirty girls with whom ChatGPT chatted via Anis Ayari’s account. “From what I observed, the chatbot was based on the elements that I had put in my bio to start the conversation,” explains the engineer.
This video, which may seem unusual, nevertheless interests many Internet users. According to a study unveiled last April by the cybersecurity brand Norton and conducted online, 64% of online dating enthusiasts are ready to use AI. Most respondents use these apps an average of six hours per week and can spend around $300 per month on them. Given this investment, 71% of them are in favor of having an AI take care of writing flirty messages for them or conversation starters, 70% for it to improve their profile and 64% their photos .
For the engineer, this type of artificial intelligence, limited in its use, could be “simply an aid provided to the user”. “Indeed, starting a conversation on a dating application is ultimately a repetitive task since for each new “match”, the user must introduce themselves again.”
An analysis shared by Anne Cordier, teacher-researcher in information and communication sciences. “AI is seen as a crutch by these users who may have difficulty connecting with others virtually.” A technology that could therefore appeal to 20-30 year olds, annoyed by repetitive tasks such as having to introduce themselves dozens of times without necessarily having an answer. This is what we call “dating fatigue”, as sociologist Christine Detrez, author of the book Crush, points out.
An observation shared by dating applications themselves. Like the founder and former boss of the dating app Bumble, Whitney Wolfe Herd, who imagines a future where AI would serve as a “dating concierge” for users of these sites.
Humans would no longer have to rack their brains to find out about apps and potentially be disappointed, avatars equipped with AI would take care of it. They would start with each other via the application before notifying users if a meeting in reality might prove interesting. “You won’t have to talk to 600 people. This concierge could scan all of San Francisco for you and tell you ‘here are the 3 people you should really meet,’” detailed the businesswoman. The objective is for users to move more quickly from virtual to authentic.
A perspective which, however, raises many ethical questions. “While we want to fight the standardization of meetings on apps, with such devices, we are moving towards a total standardization of love,” notes Anne Cordier. “There is no longer any real room for personality or discovery and, in truth, we are constantly postponing the big leap into the unknown,” concludes the researcher.