The AI 'concierge' that will decide who you date

Dating app users may soon be able to avoid awkward meet-ups with potential partners by using AI "concierges" to do the dating for them.

Users would have an AI avatar programmed with their "interests, likes, dislikes, even conversation habits", said Glamour, and this bot would chat with other users' bots to see if "the two real people behind the bots might be a good match". 

Just "think of it like an arranged match – and the matchmaker is a robot. Not scary at all, right?"

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'Don't have to talk to 600 people'

Artificial intelligence has played a growing role in the dating scene for some time, with dating apps offering virtual dating assistants powered by AI algorithms.

The rise of generative AI that can "learn to mimic particular people" has led to "plenty of speculation" around how else the technology could be used in the "romantic arena", said NBC News.

Now, Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd has outlined one potential development. "There is a world where your dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierges," she told the Bloomberg Tech Summit in San Francisco earlier this month. "And then you don’t have to talk to 600 people."

The concierge idea was foreseen by the dystopian Netflix series "Black Mirror". In an episode called "Hang the DJ", a couple are matched into relationships for fixed lengths of time by an algorithm that eventually determines their life-long partner. "Needless to say, it doesn't exactly end well for humanity," said Glamour.

AI can't form 'genuine connections'

There's some "healthy scepticism" about an AI-based dating scene, said NBC News. Some social media users have expressed fears that it would "exacerbate the isolation and loneliness" that "people have been feeling in recent years".

We should be "wary" of the integration of AI into such "private and intimate spaces", said MSNBC's Noor Noman. Intimacy is "critical for our mental, physical and emotional health", and using AI in dating "threatens to further disconnect and isolate us", and "atrophy the muscles we need to be intimate with someone else".

Perhaps, said Glamour, but online dating takes "a lot of energy and time". Jessica Alderson, a relationship expert at So Synced, told the magazine that although users would "still need to filter all of the suggestions" through their own "values and judgment", AI "can provide a starting point and inspiration".

But "you can't expect a machine to do the work for you when it comes to forming genuine connections with other human beings", she added, so this plan "defeats the purpose of relationships".