Match says nearly half of singles in the United States feel negatively about AI in dating

Dating app giant Match Group – which owns apps like Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid – conducted a study to determine how single people in the US really feel about the relationship between artificial intelligence and dating. It turns out that people don’t want AI messing with every aspect of human life.

Across the industry, dating apps are experimenting with artificial intelligence. Bumble introduced a dating assistant named Bee, and Tinder is spending so much on AI tools that it’s slowing down the hiring process. Meanwhile, Hinge’s CEO resigned last year to launch a more AI-focused dating app entirely.

But according to a Match poll of 1,000 people between the ages of 18 and 39, 47% of singles have a negative view of the use of AI in romantic contexts.

This perspective varies depending on the purpose for which AI is being used. About 40% of singles say they would refuse to date someone who uses an AI companion app, and that number rises to 51% among women aged 18-24. However, only 12% of 18-24 year olds said they had used a companion app in the past three months, and only about a third of those users said they were looking for real connections with these chatbots.

While Match says people have an “almost universal” rejection of AI dating, like in the movie “Her,” that doesn’t mean participants are completely opposed to AI features within apps. About 64% of participants said they could see how AI could help them in their dating journey.

If we are being pedantic, TechnicallyEvery major dating app has already used some form of matching algorithm since before we knew what GPT was. This survey points to the new set of AI features that basically every app offers, which helps users create their profiles, choose photos, and keep conversations flowing.

What dating app developers should take away from this survey is that people are not completely closed off to AI; They just don’t want to be in a relationship with a robot, and they don’t want to feel as if their dating experiences are overly inundated with technology that feels inauthentic.

“Ask singles what they want from AI in dating, and the answer is pretty consistent: Help with the hard parts, but hands off for the human parts,” Match wrote in a blog post. “Yes, they will use it to help them create a profile or to help know what to say when the conversation gets quiet, but the actual connection has yet to be established.”

Hopefully this message will reach dating entrepreneurs like Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, who suggested that dating app users could have personal bots that date other users’ bots. It’s pretty normal these days to say you met your partner online, but “his bot asked my bot out, and our bots did it” will never be a socially acceptable meet-cute.