In one of the popular episodes of “Black Mirror”, a British television anthology series that explores the flip side of technology set in a dystopian near-future, the couples are matched into relationships for fixed lengths of time by a compatibility algorithm called “System” that eventually determines their life-long partner.
The episode, titled “Hang the DJ”, is a commentary on the technology-dictated dating landscape and the shock ending reveals how true human love will eventually find a way to beat the system.
The glimpses of life depicted in this sci-fi series are already unfolding in contemporary society as technology is dominating every sphere of our lives.
All those lamenting over declining human connections due to an all-pervading domination of gadgets will have to reconcile to this reality. Artificial Intelligence is making its way into the dating world, choosing your soulmate by matching the profiles.
With loneliness among the youth emerging as an urban epidemic, algorithms have come to replace the human touch. Artificial Intelligence is set to take over emotional intelligence too. In the words of Whitney Herd, CEO of ‘Bumble’, a popular dating platform, “AI is the future of dating.”
Romance in the ‘AI’r!
Here is what AI-driven dating looks like A romantic app scans your dating profile and makes a chatbot based on that information.
Then it matches your chatbot with other people's chatbots and has them go on "dates" — all without you having to be involved.
After the two chatbots have their awkward first conversation, like “What are your hobbies?" “Do I have to live with your parents?”, you can review the chat logs and see if you think the other real person is worth messaging in real life.
SciMatch is a dating app that gives users a compatibility score based on their personalities. Rather than using a questionnaire to assess personality, SciMatch has trained an AI model to predict personality from people’s faces.
The founders claim their technology can predict personality measures from facial scans with 87% accuracy.
However, some experts argue—rightly so—that personality traits can’t be predicted from facial attributes.
Another app, Iris Dating, is taking things back to basics. It predicts attraction by having users register their likes or dislikes of a large number of photos, starting with random stock images and then narrowing down to pictures of people the algorithm predicts the user will find attractive.
At the end of this process, Iris claims it will have trained an AI that understands your type.
It is highly unconvincing that AI tools will never be able to predict something as messy and interactional as human attraction.
Snack, a Gen Z-focused dating app launched in 2020, has users create an avatar and train it to emulate them by talking with it. But the bot-on-bot dates proved awkward. And, they can never replicate the behaviour of real humans.
Many find such scenarios—integration of AI into intimate spaces—very scary. There is no doubt that technology and Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are immensely useful tools in a myriad of fields ranging from medicine to coding, they cannot replace real-world connections.
But love language is beyond the reach of algorithms; It may be imperfect but is purely human. The integration of AI into dating threatens to further disconnect and isolate us.
In the initial stages, dating sites had users describe themselves and what they wanted in a partner, but they gradually found this approach did not work because people are not very good judges of what they are attracted to.
Navigating imperfections
Human intimacy is not about perfection. It is about navigating the imperfections, complexities and vulnerabilities with an empathetic mind to make relationships work.
Making mistakes and learning from them is fundamental to human experience. Using AI to minimize the likelihood of missteps and conflict will turn us into confused souls, unable to navigate the messy, complex — and thereby beautiful — terrain of direct human connection.
The quest for perfection in relationships, whether with humans or AI, reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of intimacy and connection.
True relationships are not about flawlessness but about mutual understanding, growth, and shared experiences. The limitations of AI underscore the complexities inherent in human relationships that cannot be simplified or substituted by technology.
The yearning for love and the need to connect is as old as human civilization. However, the irony of our times is that even in a highly connected world, one is often lonely.
The allure of AI companionship, with its immediate responsiveness and adaptability, may seem like an appealing escape from the challenges of dating in the modern world.
Yet, we must recognize that AI cannot replicate the intricacies of genuine human interactions. There are also safety concerns over AI-driven dating because one is required to give the most intimate details and personal preferences to these platforms in order to share this data with whomever they see fit.
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