KAITLYN HUAMANI
Marie Lansley recently started a new job in a new city while searching for a partner. In her dating pursuits, the freshly minted San Franciscan has been “trying everything” — including some help from artificial intelligence. AI chatbots have become — for her and many others — de facto dating coaches and relationship experts.
Lansley, 36, consults AI chatbots for help in starting conversations, something she finds difficult on dating apps despite being comfortable doing so in person. Although she is optimistic about the possibilities, she acknowledges the incongruency between romance and technology.
“I am open to AI finding me the love of my life, but I am also not fully convinced that it can,” Lansley said. “AI is great at making dating more efficient. But the chemistry — that is always going to be analogue.”
AI adopters use the tech in varied ways to find romance. Some patronise AI matchmaking services, while others use tools to build profiles. But the most common way is enlisting chatbots to draft messages to potential matches and interpret responses.
Lansley switches between OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Others turn to Elon Musk’s Grok, Google’s Gemini and other chatbots. Dating apps and AI companies are leaning into it. ChatGPT and Gemini have posted content on TikTok showcasing customised, personality-laden relationship advice.
“Claude is the new Cyrano,” said dating coach Carey Gaynes, referencing the 19th-century French play Cyrano de Bergerac, where the titular character provides the brains behind another man’s romantic words. “You are using a voice that is not yours.”
Gaynes has heard of daters of all ages turning to the technology, both from her client base and her YouTube channel, Coffee with Carey. She sees how it could be useful, but worries about overreliance.
Lansley was startled by how chatbots appear to display emotional intelligence. During an onboarding call with the AI matchmaker app Known, the questions went deeper than traditional platforms, striving for empathy. It does not necessarily lead to better results — her first match was not a perfect fit.
Mason Naung, a 25-year-old student in Los Angeles, does not use chatbots for message ideas but sees the benefit for “icebreakers” during initial exchanges. “Sometimes I struggle to think about what the opening line should be like,” he said. But if AI-written messages go beyond those initial exchanges, that would be a “small red flag.”
Several people expressed reservations about using tech for deeply personal aspects of life. Clara Sullivan, a 22-year-old student in Los Angeles, said she would not reply to a potential partner if she knew they used AI-written messages. “I think it is really scary how reliant people are on it,” Sullivan said. “It has completely gotten rid of people’s ability to think creatively.”
A survey from the Pew Research Centre found 53% of US adults say AI will worsen people’s ability to think creatively, while half feel it will harm the ability to form meaningful relationships. Still, the marriage of AI with the lucrative dating industry was inescapable.