Dating apps exploit you, dating profiles lie to you, and sex is basically something old people used to do. You might as well consider it: can AI help you find love?
For a handful of tech entrepreneurs and a few brave Londoners, the answer is “maybe”.
No, this is not a story about humans falling in love with sexy computer voices – and strictly speaking, AI dating of some variety has been around for a while. Most big platforms have integrated machine learning and some AI features into their offerings over the past few years.
But dreams of a robot-powered future – or perhaps just general dating malaise and a mounting loneliness crisis – have fuelled a new crop of startups that aim to use the possibilities of the technology differently.
Jasmine, 28, was single for three years when she downloaded the AI-powered dating app Fate. With popular dating apps such as Hinge and Tinder, things were “repetitive”, she said: the same conversations over and over.
“I thought, why not sign up, try something different? It sounded quite cool using, you know, agentic AI, which is where the world is going now, isn’t it?”
Fate, a London startup that went live last May, bills itself as the first “agentic AI dating app”. Its core offering is an AI personality named Fate that “onboards” users during an interview, asking them about their hopes and struggles before putting forward five potential matches – no swiping involved.
Fate will also coach users through their interactions, if they desire, a functionality Jasmine described as helpful and another user said was “scary” and “a bit like Black Mirror’.
Rakesh Naidu, Fate’s founder, demonstrated its coaching ability in an interview with the Guardian. “I just feel a bit hopeless at the moment in regards to my chats. I feel like I’m not being engaging enough or meaningful enough,” he said into his phone. “I just need some kind of meaningful questions I can ask to really uncover the essence of people.”
“I hear you, Rakesh,” said a synthetic female voice. “Here are a few ideas. One, what’s something you’re passionate about that not many people know?”
Naidu, 28, said he started Fate in order to address shortcomings in the world’s biggest dating platforms – apps such as Tinder, Bumble and Hinge, which monetise the time users spend on them and “are literally profiting off keeping people lonely”.
Other startups, from Sitch to Keeper, have launched across the US, hoping AI features can provide the novelty to win them a share of a crowded market. Sitch leverages the power of AI to manage vasts amounts of information, inviting users to “give us detailed feedback down to the hair colour, where they want to raise a family, and their fav music”; Keeper says it can find “a match with rare and real soulmate potential”.
Part of the issue, Naidu says, are algorithmic approaches to matchmaking: Tinder at one point ranked users’ desirability through an Elo score, an algorithm originally used to rate chess players. On dating platforms, it’s a Hobbesian proposition – high-scoring users are shown to other high-scoring users, low-scoring users to other low-scoring users. “It’s very superficial,” said Naidu.
AI, in theory, can offer a different way. Awkward as it may be to discuss your dating life with a chatbot, Fate does not rank you based on your responses, but instead uses an LLM to try to find other users who, based on their interview, might be similar to you. That approach, along with the AI dating coach, helps users to focus on authentic connection, said Naidu – “similarity and reciprocity of personality”.
Amelia Miller, a consultant for Match Group (which owns Tinder and Hinge), worries about this approach.
A recent study from the group surveyed 5,000 Europeans about their online dating preferences – and found that while many were interested in AI tools to weed out fake profiles and flag toxic users, most, 62%, were skeptical about using AI to guide their conversations. One obvious anxiety might be the dystopian idea of two agentic AIs steering a conversation, with the humans nominally in charge turning into little more than meatspace mouthpieces.
Miller, however, who coaches people on their relationships with AI, says she sees many clients turn to an LLM for advice in the smaller, uncomfortable moments of building their relationships – asking AI how to craft a text, for example, or respond to an intimate question.
“Often I’m trying to make sure that people aren’t turning to machines because turning to humans demands a level of vulnerability that has become uncomfortable now that there is an alternative,” she said.
The appeal of an AI coach such as Fate is that revealing yourself to it – your judgments, hopes and idiosyncrasies – involves no risk; it does not remember or evaluate. Friends do, and, says Miller, asking advice from them helps hone the skills for successful relationships.
“Advice is really one of the key ways that people practice vulnerability in a more low-stakes environment – they build up to more vulnerable moments in a romantic context.”
Jeremias has been using Fate for several months. He said he doesn’t use the AI coach: “I could see it being helpful, but I mean there are obviously some concerns. Like the new generation are basically not going to have the real world experience of actually trying and failing.”
The app recently helped him to meet someone after a long period of being single in London. He’s not sure if this is because of the AI matching, or because Fate simply serves up only five matches at a time – no infinite swiping – and, excruciatingly, forces its users to write an explanation when they reject a potential match.
“It makes the swiping more thoughtful. If I’m actually saying no to this person, what are the reasons I’m saying no to them?”
He and Jasmine both have second dates upcoming, both after being single for several years, they say.
“It is exciting because you get like, you know, the butterflies in your stomach again, going on a date with someone, doing yourself up really nicely, wearing dresses, heels. It’s fun,” said Jasmine.
