Can AI save dating apps?
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If you've been on a dating app recently, you might have seen the option for it to scan through your pictures and pick what it thinks is the hottest one. That is just one example of how artificial intelligence is already creeping into some of the most popular dating apps.

But now there's also a range of new apps that take AI to a whole different level. There are some that even try to predict who you'll be attracted to. And given that so many people are shunning the apps altogether in favour of meeting in real life, whether that's going to bars or at running clubs, could this tech save dating apps from doom?

Today you're going to hear how AI-powered dating apps work, whether they'll help you find the love of your life or if they're just a bit creepy. I'm Hannah Gelbart and this is What's in the World from the BBC World Service. Here in the studio with me is Tamsin Craftman, a BBC journalist. Hello. Hi, how are you? Good, thank you. So first of all, can you just explain the difference between the traditional dating apps that have been around for a while and these AI dating apps?

If you have used a dating app, you would know that they provide you with profiles and then you swipe left or right. And if you both swipe right, meaning you both want to match with that person, it will match you and you will start a conversation. And that's kind of the main premise.

But with these AI dating apps, there are so many other features where it can help you build a profile. It can suggest different things for you. It can even suggest matches based off a variety of factors, such as having very similar or compatible relationships.

hobbies or thinking that you might be attracted to one another. So essentially, it seemed to elevate the traditional dating experience. So these actually could help people who struggle with online dating. Trying to write your own profile or start a conversation can be quite daunting. Well, dating can be a daunting process for quite a lot of people, especially people that don't know even what to put in a bio because the problem is, is that

dating apps have become so popular, it's almost a formula. You have to do it a certain way in order to get those matches. And what some AI bots out there could actually do is help you and really coach you into building the best possible profile to actually secure dates.

You have been speaking to people about whether they would use AI for dating. What do they say? So I went to Paris, which is commonly known as the city of love, and I thought it would be the perfect place to ask them if they would use AI to find love. And this is what they told me.

me.

I'm using it for some other things, so for instance, diet or some kind of thing. So why not? You have downloaded an AI dating app. What was your experience like? What was it like to use it? So I downloaded an app called Iris. There were many different apps on the market that did different things, but the reason I picked Iris is because

It takes it kind of all back to basics, not looking at things like personality, but just simply your attraction to one another. So it uses an AI model that learns what you like by having you swipe on hundreds of images.

And when I first logged onto the app, of course, it takes in the very basic information like your name, your age, etc. But then it started to train up the AI model. And this is what it asked me. Let's start AI training, a crucial step in our journey.

The training has three phases. In phase one, I'll show you random photos. Rate them as like or pass. If you're not sure, choose maybe. Once I have enough data, we'll move to the next phase. You'll start to see more photos you like from phase to phase. In reality, it was about 25 minutes of me swiping through hundreds, if not actually thousands of

of stock images and there are many many problems with these stock images but I want you to have a listen to how I found it.

Just to be transparent, I'm very much clicking pass on everyone I'm seeing, which is not great so far. The app has told me that it's beginning to understand me and my type. I don't know if it really has. I feel like I didn't actually click like on that many people. Still a lot of passes here. Maybe it is getting better. Weirdly, I'm starting to see a lot of men with beards. So now says I'm into phase three, which I think is the final phase. Again, a lot of men with beards.

It says that it's starting to understand what facial features I find attractive. I don't even know if that was something I was looking for. Okay, so it's now showing me my first few pics. I'm not shy in saying this. Every single person is white and brunette. And I do think it's concerning here because it's essentially doubling down on this idea that we all have a type.

Is that type representative of the kind of people you've dated? Have they been white men, brunettes with beards? Scarily, yes. And I didn't like it at all. We all want to believe that we are people that are very open to everybody. And to see it right there in my hands, it made me very uncomfortable.

It went through this process and it found your type. And then did it try to go through the profiles of real life humans and match you with them? Yes. So that is what happened. So at the very end there, I had six people in front of me that supposedly matched my type. What I will say is, would I have picked them on a more traditional app like Hinge? I'm not so sure. However, I did find them attractive. And this is...

the thing that I found so scary about the app. But there are so many pros and cons to this method because if you're going just off of facial features, yes, I'm sure it does work. But there are so many other elements to dating that this app just did not consider. Because you might be attracted to someone's face but completely disagree with their political views, you might really dislike their personality or their personality.

body shape or height is a big thing that we hear about when it comes to dating apps it tends to be quite an important feature did you follow up conversations with any of them did anything go anywhere

So nothing went anywhere because of one big reason, and that was location. The problem is, is that all of the people that it was matching me with were in the United States, in Romania, in essentially all over the world. Also, another thing that comes up a lot when we talk about AI is bias in terms of diversity, disability, etc.

All of the different ways that humans can be different. When you meet someone in real life, you can be attracted to whoever, right? But if you are shown a very limited pool of people, that might mean that you have fewer people to choose from.

Well, this is another consideration. When I was using the app, as I say, it provided me with the same kind of person. And obviously the real world is not like that. You do not know who you're going to meet, what background someone is from. But it's essentially saying you have a type and you're going to stick with it no matter what,

It also entirely depends on your community and the different people that you interact with. Because, you know, if you have grown up in a not very diverse neighbourhood, you won't have been exposed to many people. But if you are more exposed to people from different backgrounds and walks of life, you're much more likely to be attracted to them too. Well, I think this is a lot of the fear with AI. It's only really providing you with what it knows. It doesn't understand things like nuance,

or as you say, exposing you to things that you might not have previously known. Now let's hear from Igor Kalashin. He is the CEO of Iris, and here he is talking about why he created the app. When probability of strong mutual attraction is one in a million, you can see how frustrating it is to constantly swipe on dating apps and almost never have that moment when you are super attracted to somebody and he or she is attracted back.

I realized that if AI can predict who I'm attracted to, instead of me swiping, AI can do it for me. And what about all of this?

about all the other different ways that people can be compatible apart from just physical attraction? Here's Igor again. People come with stating in their profiles, well, I'm a Democrat and, you know, if you're a Republican, don't even reach out to me. But then if we predict strong mutual attraction, all of a sudden they forget about those differences. All of a sudden they are not that important. The law is attraction.

the more important other factors are, like distance and religion and race. The higher is attraction, less attention you pay to all those factors.

I want to leave the facial attraction element to one side for a moment, Tamzin, because Iris shows one application of AI in dating. There are already lots of regular dating apps that have added in AI features, like Hinge, which uses AI to help you improve your profile, or Tinder and Bumble can help you choose a good profile picture to make the best first impression. And then there are other newcomers that are much more focused on AI. Talk me through some of those.

Well, AI can work in so many ways and that is why it's almost seen as the perfect candidate for these relationship apps.

We've seen relationship coaches, such as an app called Mino and one called Riz, which provides help with responses, trying to kind of help users become more confident on their dating journey. There's also one called SciMatch, which is kind of similar to Iris in a different way. It provides compatibility scores based on your personality and then also has an AI model which predicts

How does AI differ from the algorithms that other dating apps use?

Well, an algorithm is very much set in stone. It's an instruction that the developer of an app will provide. And that is what that is. However, what AI is, is it's constantly evolving the set of instructions to

based off of the data that you are giving the app. So it can make much more personalised and powerful decisions and it will learn from the matches that you get or don't get, the conversations you have and don't have. Absolutely. I mean, if you match with someone that is maybe outside of your type, it might start changing the kind of person that it's giving you and evolving as you evolve as a data.

One other thing that we haven't really touched on is safety and how safe traditional dating apps are. Is there a way that using AI might make it a safer experience for people to meet up with strangers?

Well, something that AI has been provenly effective at doing is stopping AI generated images from coming onto the site. We're seeing this with the more kind of standard apps that we've been talking about. But also I noticed it myself and so have many others on these new AI powered dating apps.

where it can scan your face and ensure that you are indeed a real person. And it's things like that that really, really help with security. Tamsin, thank you so much for coming into the studio. I hope that you find your one. Thank you very much.

Annual downloads of some of the biggest dating apps are going down and AI is providing a fresh way to help people meet their match, but it might not bring those users back. What about you? I'm keen to hear what you think about this. If you've tried an AI dating app and if you'd feel comfortable chatting to someone if you knew that the whole conversation could have been written by AI.

You can get in touch with us on Instagram. We're on WhatsApp. You can slide into our DMs or send us a voice note. And of course, we're also on YouTube on the BBC World Service YouTube channel. So if you haven't already, please click subscribe. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Hannah Gelbart. This is What In The World from the BBC World Service. We'll see you next time.