Remember that hilarious ChatGPT breakup letter that made its way around the internet and broke everyone’s heart, literally?
Read: ChatGPT wrote a merciless breakup letter
Well, now I have got another AI love story. But this time it’s not only breaking hearts, but it is breaking Tinder.
Let me introduce you to Alexandr Zhadan
He is a 23-year-old guy from Москва (I am from Europe, so a bit of Russian is quite handy these days: Moscow).
He thought, “Why waste time on thousands of Tinder matches when I can have AI do all the emotional labor for me?”
That is right, this guy literally outsourced dating to ChatGPT.
Imagine being so fed up with dating apps that you say, “You know what, let’s get a robot to handle my love life”.
Sounds like a dystopian future
Or maybe the premise of a bad rom-com.
Either way, Zhadan had a plan……
Before we start!
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Tinder meets Terminator
After a breakup (as these stories usually go), Alexandr didn’t just go back to swiping like the rest of us sad mortals.
No, no…
He unleashed the AI beast on his 5,000 Tinder matches.
5.000 Tinder matches by the way is quite a feat.
I know.
I’ve been there.
Clearly, when your love life is a dumpster fire, throwing some advanced machine learning algorithms at it is the next logical step.
It would be for me. And I can know, because I have had people ask me the question on Tinder before if I was a bot.
It might have been my stacatto writing style..
…or perhaps it was the AI generated photo’s?
Anyways, he modified his ChatGPT based bot (I would go for Chatbase or Botpress for this one myself) for his personal dating assistant. Not to write code or help with work emails, mind you, just to sort through his endless supply of potential dating partners.
Yep, this guy turned his love life into a math problem.
I just like creative engineers….
“I was talking about this with my friends,” Zhadan told a MailOnline reporter (with probably a heavy Russian English accent – you know, the stuff from movies).
Let’s be real, he probably meant that he was bragging about his giant pile of Tinder matches and figured he could cut the workload by letting AI decide who deserves his time.
Oh so smart…
And it did not stop at swiping..
Nope, his bot was also drafting witty texts, scheduling dates, and, apparently, playing matchmaker.
Move over, Hitch (dating guy).
We have got a new dating guru in town!
Swiping right and making it highly efficient
His ChatGPT based bot did not just spew out the usual “Hey, how’s your day?, I like your outfit, Oh you are a Vodka drining fan as well” texts either.
The bot was actually getting into some deep, meaningful conversations on Alexandr’s behalf.
Hahahahaaaa… Now that is speed dating!
Instead of just some small talk, you have got a machine scanning profiles like it’s reading job applications.
But it was not going smooth all of the time.
The first version of his bot suggested dates that screamed “run!”, like “a long walk in the woods”.
Yeah, sure, that doesn’t sound terrifying at all. Nothing says romance like this setup for a potential horror movie.
But don’t worry.
The AI got a lot smarter when it was upgraded to GPT-4.
For instance, it learned to cut out those creepy date ideas and streamlined the whole process.
Don’t you just love the coming of Agentic AI?
The result was that Zhadan went on over a hundred dates last year.
Yeah, a hundred.
In one year.
I am not sure if I would be up for the task…
The AI love guru
It is getting wilder and wilder
Alexandr did not stop at one night stands and awkward first dates. He actually met the one.
That’s right!
All those algorithmically optimized swipes led him to his Karina.
She is the woman he is now going to get married to.
And finally, after a year, he told her about his AI wingman.
Imagine your future spouse dropping you this line, “Oh by the way, dearest, you know, the deep, insightful conversations we had together? Yeah…. ummm, that was a bot. I was just the guy showing up”.
Uhhh Romantic, huh?
At first, she was shocked.
Duhhhh…hahahaha…no shit Sherlock..
But then, as any reasonable person in 2024 would, she shrugged and thought, “I guess AI helped this guy actually be somewhat interesting”.
Who needs flowers and hand written love letters when you have machine-generated sweet talk?
Others using AI to hijack love
Alexandr isn’t alone.
The internet is loaded with people letting AI handle the hard stuff.
Think of something like… emotions.
Outsourcing your inner thoughts, and your tears to a bot…
Remember when that ChatGPT breakup letter went viral? Someone basically told the AI, “Hey, end this relationship for me”, and the result was a perfectly crafted “It’s not you, it’s me” message.
It was actually more poetic and heartfelt than any human could muster. People even started requesting AI to write their vows.
Who ever knew that we could outsource our feelings to robots?
Oh, a tip from the Maestro… the AI that has the best of the best emotional (faking) capabilities is Hume AI. But don’t say that you got it from me, ok?
Or what about that one time a guy used AI to craft the perfect apology text to his ex?
Apparently, if you can’t figure out how to win someone back, an algorithm can.
Honestly, it’s only a matter of time before someone has an LLM write their wedding vows, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it already happened.
Because I know that I would..
In fact, a quick look around the internet and you’ll see people using AI to navigate everything from their love lives to their friendships.
And that is why we end up with over 50% of the internet consisting out of AI generated crap. Read: 57% of the internet is AI generated and causes model collapse
or Half of the internet is junk. Could AI solve this problem?
or
How to spot a bot on Tinder
Bots on Tinder are quite common, although not in the sense that they are used for dating. They are actually used for phishing. They are trying to send you malicious links or otherwise trying to collect some personal info from you.
That can be quite a frustration. But I must be honest in saying that they are quite easy to detect if you know where to look for.
Here we go:
Scan the profile for high-quality pictures.
If the profile pic looks too good to be real, it probably is.
When I use Midjourney or Leonardo (image creation AI), it kind of generates studio-quality pictures. And the scammers use those on their profiles. Or they just pictures from other social media accounts.
So, if the photos look like they could’ve come out of a magazine, then the profile is probably a bot. Use a reverse image search engine like TinEye to see if their profile pictures are sourced from somewhere else.
Oh, you can also see if the profile has a gray checkmark because this proves that they got their profile photo verified with Tinder.
Look for a linked Facebook, Instra or Spotify account.
Some bots won’t link a Facebook account, while others will have a fake profile. If the account is attached to a Facebook profile, take a moment to browse through the photos, interests, and friends list. According to certain research, Facebook accounts attached to bot profiles have an average of 60 friends.
If the photos and interests seem generic, it’s safe to guess that the profile belongs to a bot. For instance, a bot Facebook account might have generic pictures of a beach, or list really vague interests like “watching movies” or “playing video games.” Think about it this way—does the profile look like it was made by a real person, or like a bunch of Google Images were copied and pasted onto the profile?
See if the account “types” very quickly.
Some people (like me) are just bloody fast typists, but bots send messages absurdly quickly.
Like The Flash kinda quick.
Just look at how long it takes an account to message you throughout the conversation. If the account is sending long messages within the span of a few seconds…..
High chance it’s a bot
And by the way, real people often aren’t able to reply right away. If the account is always available, there’s a good chance that they’re a bot.
Look for strange writing habits.
Check for strange, recurring abnormalities in their messages. In my research for this article, I read that some bots might put 2 spaces in between each word, or indent their messages before sending. Others might use multiple punctuation marks. If the profile consistently types like this, assume they’re a bot and end the conversation. For instance, a bot might use 2 periods at the end of every sentence.
Send a nonsense message or send it some sarcastic humor.
Send over a key smash, or a series of unintelligible letters. Or put in one of my blogs, that will have the same effect. A real person will reply with something like “what is this” or “is everything okay with you up there?”. A bot could repeat your key smash back to you as a part of normal conversation. It also could disregard your input alltogether. You might also send a joking message, like “I got rained on when I was heading into work. I just love sitting in damp clothes all day”. In response, the bot might genuinely believe that you like sitting in wet clothes.
- For instance, you might send something like “I love eating sdf;fk for dinner.” A real person would reply in confusion, while a bot might say, “What’s your favorite part about sdf;fk?”
If the Tinder profile ends up being an actual person, you are in luck ! So just send a message apologizing for the typo.
This is the future of dating
So, where does this leave us?
Are we all just going to let AI handle our relationships from now on?
If you have read my article on machine customers, you might well believe we are heading in that direction (We need to develop a vision for Machine Customers)
Just think, you could be sitting on your couch while a machine goes on awkward dates for you.
With VR glasses on (read: The RayNeo. Where AI meets AR), you wouldn’t even have to leave the house.
Is this what dating has become?
Perhaps we’re all doomed to fall in love with chatbots while they set us up with real humans.
Either way, I have to admit, it’s a pretty impressive hack.
And honestly, I can’t decide if that’s genius or just plain lazy.
Signing-off Marco
Well, that’s a wrap for today. Tomorrow, I’ll have a fresh episode of TechTonic Shifts for you. If you enjoy my writing and want to support my work, feel free to buy me a coffee ♨️
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