Is Your Tinder Date Actually An AI Chat Bot? Maybe.

Forbes

AI found him a date. ChatGPT told him to propose. Now they're getting married.  Aeksandr Zhadan knew he didn’t want to match on Tinder with any women holding flowers in their profile pictures. In Russia, where he lives, he thought it was a telltale sign of a big ego—akin to the men-holding-fish-photos that have plagued dating apps in the United States.  He also knew he didn’t want to continue conversations with women who were very religious, into astrology, or did not work.  So he built some AI-powered bots to weed them out.  “Previously I’d had a good relationship for two years, and I realized that I understand what I want, I understand what I don't want, and I understand how we can connect,” Zhadan, a 23-year-old AI product manager who goes by Sasha, told Forbes from Moscow. “I wanted to find the one.” To cut out some of the time and emotional strain of going on hundreds of dates and sifting through thousands of profiles on Tinder, he built an auto-swiper in 2022 to do some of the work. And when ChatGPT was unveiled shortly after, he started programming it to chat with his matches. Transcripts, screenshots and data reviewed by Forbes show the evolution of Sasha’s AI as he improved it over several months.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandralevine/2024/02/14/dating-apps-ai-chatgpt-tinder-hinge-bumble-match/?sh=3f536cd84ddc  Forbes Daily Briefing shares the best of Forbes reporting on wealth, business, entrepreneurship, leadership and more. Tune in every day, seven days a week, to hear a new story. Subscribe here: https://art19.com/shows/forbes-daily-briefing  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00 Here's your Forbes daily briefing for Thursday, February 15th.

00:05 Today on Forbes, AI found him a date.

00:09 ChatGPT told him to propose. Now they're getting married.

00:14 Well, it's the day after Valentine's Day, but love is really an everyday thing.

00:18 In modern times, for many, that means back to scrolling on dating apps.

00:23 Alexander Zadan, 23-year-old AI product manager who goes by Sasha,

00:28 knew he didn't want to match on Tinder with any women holding flowers in their profile pictures.

00:34 In Russia, where he lives, he thought it was a telltale sign of a big ego,

00:38 akin to the men holding fish photos that have plagued dating apps in the United States.

00:43 He also knew he didn't want to continue conversations with women who were very religious,

00:48 into astrology, or did not work.

00:51 So he built some AI-powered bots to weed them out.

00:55 From his home in Moscow, Zadan told Forbes,

00:58 To cut out some of the time and emotional strain of going on hundreds of dates

01:10 and sifting through thousands of profiles on Tinder,

01:13 he built an autoswiper in 2022 to do some of the work.

01:17 And when ChatGPT was unveiled shortly after,

01:20 he started programming it to chat with his matches.

01:23 Transcripts, screenshots, and data reviewed by Forbes

01:27 show the evolution of Sasha's AI as he improved it over several months.

01:31 In the beginning, the bot was outright bad.

01:34 It didn't sound like him and was missing basic information.

01:38 If GPT said Sasha's dog was in the hospital, and the woman asked "what happened?"

01:42 he was unable to respond in a logical way.

01:45 To improve his Tinder talker, Sasha created a database using human conversations

01:50 that he, not GPT, had previously had on the app,

01:54 including keywords, questions, and answers on topics he often talked about.

01:58 He trained the next iteration of his chatbot on that data,

02:02 and trained his autoswiper, powered by vision model TorchVision,

02:06 to filter out more photos based on his preferences.

02:09 And things did get better, despite the occasional hiccup.

02:12 In one instance, without Sasha knowing,

02:15 GPT accepted a date at the local contemporary multimedia art museum of Moscow.

02:20 When the woman showed up, and Sasha, unaware, did not,

02:23 she messaged him on Tinder to ask if he was still coming.

02:27 The bot responded reassuring her that he was on his way, and apologizing for the delay.

02:32 In December 2022, Sasha's GPT began chatting with a match who lived just outside Moscow,

02:38 Karina Vyalshikhaeva, and they met in person for the first time in January.

02:43 At the time, Sasha opted not to pursue the relationship,

02:46 but a few months later, an improved version of his bot based on GPT-4 resurrected their Tinder chat.

02:53 It wrote, "Hi, we haven't talked in a while. I hope you're doing well.

02:57 I was thinking about our conversations and decided to write. How are you?"

03:02 And that's when the bot and Karina really clicked.

03:06 Karina, who was 22 years old, did not know a bot had slid into her DMs.

03:11 Karina had no idea she'd been algorithmically chosen and conversing with AI

03:15 until more than six months later, in November,

03:18 when she and Sasha were already living together and he broke the news.

03:22 She told Forbes, "I was really shocked, because in that moment I analyzed all the messages in my head.

03:28 Like, when did he answer me, and when did the bot answer me? And what is the difference?"

03:34 AI in dating is not exactly new.

03:36 Some of the most popular dating apps on the market, from Bumble to match groups Hinge and Tinder,

03:41 have long relied on machine learning, both to calibrate possible matches

03:45 and to shield users from unsolicited nude photos, bots, and fraudsters.

03:50 But since the introduction of chat GPT and other generative AI,

03:54 which in the last year have finally made the technology a household name,

03:57 entrepreneurs are finding new ways to apply it to dating,

04:00 and many looking for love are adopting it at a rapid clip.

04:04 Recent months have seen an explosion of everything from bots that'll spit out pickup lines and flirt for you

04:10 to AI editors that'll polish your dating profile

04:13 and photo generators that can turn your bathroom selfies into high-quality headshots.

04:18 All this has some bemoaning the sad, dystopian state of romantic relationships,

04:23 and others are embracing the moment as a transformative one for human connection.

04:27 More than a quarter of young Americans think algorithms can predict whether two people will fall in love,

04:33 according to Pew Data.

04:35 For full coverage, and to see how the bot encouraged Sasha to propose to Karina,

04:39 check out Alexandra S. Levine's piece on Forbes.com.

04:44 This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.

04:49 [music]

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