Forget Hinge or Bumble. This App Promises a Personal AI Matchmaker

“On the matching app, if we ask you a question and your tone changes in the answer, that tells us that you may not be telling us the whole truth. So we’ll ask you the same question two or three different ways throughout your experience,” says Cohen-Aslatei. “We built this to mimic what a matchmaker would do for a client. The LLM tracks the changes in pitch and tone of your voice because we want to make sure we have an accurate understanding of who you are and what you’re looking for.”

After answering dozens of other questions about lifestyle, future goals, boundaries, family, attraction, hobbies and more over the course of a few days, Tai told me he would take the information provided and get back to me. Two days later, I received my first two potential matches.

I love you, living girl

As a 31 year old woman, I place my ideal age range between a healthy 26 and 40 years old. My first two games were 23 and 47. One was not alive when 9/11 happened and the other had already graduated from college at that point. A difficult start.

When a potential match is found, the person’s image is blurred and Tai gives you a summary of what makes you a good potential match. (You must provide selfie verification to confirm your identity, and no unverified person will ever be identified.) After that, you can click to learn a little more about them, such as occupation, age, income, and a short bio created by the AI.

At this stage of AI adoption, there is still a strong statistical bias toward, say, men who wear wraparound sunglasses and think that driving a Cybertruck is a sign of manliness. Nearly every one of the 16 matches I received during testing were Christian and wanted children as soon as possible, which Tai flagged as a potential problem each time. Many were also initially reported by Tai for only wanting to date a certain race or valuing traditional gender roles, which I made clear I did not agree with.

Out of journalistic duty, I accepted every match I received; even an avid MMA bodybuilder who enjoys grilling meat (I’m vegan) and going to the shooting range (I’m generally anti-gun). The games ranged from Portland, Oregon, to DC, to New York (where I live, although most of the games took place outside of New York). Overall, not a single person I’ve been matched with would be someone I would swipe right on if I saw them on a traditional dating app.

If you accept, you will either have to wait for the other person to accept or decline the match, or they will have already accepted and you can start chatting. Here, your AI dating coach steps in to play wingman, providing prompts based on the other person’s profile, highlighting similarities you have, and asking conversation questions based on the match’s profile responses. Not only does the coach provide potential icebreakers (and answers), but you can also chat and ask for advice.

Three Day Rule via Molly Higgins

I asked him to give me tips for breaking the ice with new matches, and he gave me advice, with each point having an explanatory paragraph underneath. Tips included giving compliments, asking open-ended questions, using humor, referencing current events, sharing about yourself and mentioning common interests. The advice was basic but solid and reflected what the coach was doing with the conversation prompts provided.

In theory, this is all a great idea and could be very useful for people who have difficulty communicating with strangers. But it could also lead to a bigger problem. You don’t really know who you talked to if the AI ​​did the talking for you. And if you meet in person, you don’t know much about your partner’s real personality. You can learn a lot about the way people type, the questions they ask, and their sense of humor. All that was missing here.