Latest news with #dating
News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
Dating ‘apocalypse' is here due to AI technology
You match with someone on a dating app. Likes are liked, tame but sweet sallies shared, favourite TV shows compared. But singletons in 2025 now face a horrible question: Are they actually talking to an eligible charmer who has gone to the bother of two fingers tapping out a response – or are they one of the increasing number of people turning to ChatGPT to do their dating for them? Sigh. The rise of the machines really is here only the Terminator never had to worry about swiping right. ('7 foot, loves W40'.) Those looking for love – and seemingly especially men – are now outsourcing the boring, hard yards of finding love to the machines. AI has officially infiltrated and infected the dating world and some users are now spending up to $80 a month to have specifically created AI 'wingman' apps craft pick-up lines, messages and even break-up texts. Users are already warning that things are now 'cooked' and the romantic 'apocalypse' is here. Fun! ChatGPT alone can craft 'perfect' pick-up lines, provide real-time feedback based on screenshots of how a chat with a match is going, reckons it can help prevent a person getting ghosted, and it claims it can 'predict long-term compatibility (not just attraction)'. Sure thing, (digital) Jan. But wait, there's more. There are now custom GPTS products and apps like Charisma Coach, YourMoveAI, WingAI and Rizz, which can craft profiles and messages for you. Rizz says it has already created more than one hundred million chat replies. Where things get really wild is what AI can do if a user uploads a prospective date's profile. ChatGPT can tell you if they are telling porkies about their height, work out how much they earn based on the backgrounds of their photos, and supposedly alert you to any possible personality red flags in their profile. Go further still, and as the Financial Times revealed, its deep research tool can create an eight-page psychological profile of a match. Should, out of such fertile beginnings, great and last loving not bloom, never fear. There are now specially created AI products that will help end a relationship like Break Up Guide which will dumpers on how to do things with 'empathy and respect'. Don't think that all of this AI-ing is just happening on the outer edges of the dating world either. More than 18 months ago, already, nearly one in four Americans were already using AI to help with online dating, according to McAfee. Imagine how many are using it now. Writer Jess Thomson recently revealed she had 'seen hundreds of the same robotic prompt cluttering people's profiles', in a piece for The Times. Unfortunately, man of the one-liners that AI comes up with are truly atrocious. Examples include: 'If you had a third nipple, where would it be?', 'Hey, so I'm hosting this charity event next week for people who can't reach orgasm. If you can't c*m, please let me know', 'Excuse me, but I think you dropped something: my jaw', and 'Are you Schrödinger's cat? Because you've got me in a state of uncertainty'. Would it shock you to know then, that, according to Mashable, the majority of people using AI dating apps are, shocker, blokes, ranging from 66 per cent of Rizz users, to rises to 85 per cent to 99 per cent. (As one commenter on that article wrote, 'This is some ridiculous Cyrano de Bergerac nonsense'.) Women are not amused. Over on Reddit, the disillusionment, frustration and genuine heartbreak are already very real. 'I mostly see men doing it,' one user wrote. 'It's extremely obvious … Usually it makes the profile read like a resume. I feel like I'm on LinkedIn. And the AI pics are just sad and pathetic.' 'I want to date humans, not what a computer thinks a human should be.' Another wrote: 'We somehow found a way to make online dating even more alienating than it is already'. One male user posted about using ChatGPT for 'unbiased dating advise [sp]' and said it kept giving him answers that suggested he was 'stunningly emotionally mature'. Commenters responded with, 'Welcome to the Apocalypse' and 'I had no idea that society was this cooked'. Even those in relationships are being caught off guard by the spread of AI and its creating emotional havoc. One 33-year-old woman had 'loved [the] long loving texts' she had gotten from her 31-year-old boyfriend only to discover that he had actually asked ChatGPT to craft messages that 'required empathy, apology and understanding'. 'It makes them feel not genuine and just wrong,' she said. An 18-year-old girl recently posted she had 'always loved' the long paragraphs her boyfriend sent her – until she downloaded ChatGPT and asked it to create a 'paragraph for girlfriend'. Do I even need to tell you the punch line? The experience seemed to leave her confused and hurt. (Though anyone posting to a dating subreddit is hardly in a great place now are they?) Soon it might be impossible for those in the dating pool to avoid AI. All the major players – Tinder, Hinge, Bumble and Grindr – are getting in on the act too and are working on incorporating AI into their products to do things like come up with opening lines and giving users feedback on their flirting. In April, Tinder, in partnership with OpenAI, launched something called The Game Game which rates your chat-up skills. Depending on who you ask, AI in dating is either as a handy tool to help the emotionally obtuse or socially anxious or fundamentally dishonest and really just plain old lazy. It can also be both. Thomson, in the Times, wrote, 'When I receive these AI-generated messages, I feel catfished. They may look the way they claim — unless they used AI in their pictures too — but their personality is, in essence, a lie told via the filter of ChatGPT.' Things might already have gone too far. I was deep in the comments on Reddit when I am across this: 'Plot twist: its not a person using ChatGPT, you matched WITH ChatGPT. It's evolving, its dating …' I suppose even large language models must get lonely? Everyone deserves love - even The Terminator.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
We asked daters what dating in 2025 is like so far
On a Tuesday night in the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan, dozens of women — and a few men — ascended to the top floor of a trendy cocktail bar for a "Masterclass in Meet Cutes." The internet has a special fascination with meet cutes, or the rom-com serendipitous way of running into a cute stranger IRL. In the age of dating apps, some argue that the meet cute is dead. The attendees came to the event hoping this was not the case, while the host, dating expert Ilana Dunn, gave attendees some tips to create their own meet cutes. SEE ALSO: Sick of dating apps? Try a dungeon sound bath instead. Before the event, I asked several attendees, both men and women, what their dating lives were like this year. Their responses echoed what I've been hearing from singles online and elsewhere: Dating apps suck, and they're begging to meet people in-person. In 2025, however, chatting up strangers is intimidating thanks to post-lockdown social fatigue and our attachments to our phones. We're more connected than ever before, but fostering actual connections seems near-impossible. Ten daters I spoke to cited well-known reasons behind the app funk: Dating over apps feels transactional, users aren't looking for the same thing and exhibit flaky behavior, and they'd rather meet someone "organically" (in-person). "Everyone is so burned out," Dunn told me. Dunn used to work for Hinge and now hosts the dating and relationship podcast Seeing Other People. "And I think people feel lost." "I'm not really looking for anything casual right now at all," said Tara, a 33-year-old dater, "so the idea of a Tinder and maybe even a Bumble — you know, you see people on there and they're like, 'I'm just open to seeing what happens.' No," she said, "I want to find my damn soul mate." Tara (who, like other daters, is identified by her first name only for privacy) is single after a long-term relationship ended, she told me over the phone, and she's looking to get married. She's not on Tinder as she still sees it as a "hookup app" (incoming Tinder CEO Spencer Rascoff wants to change this about Tinder, especially for younger adults), she didn't find politically aligned people on Bumble as a leftist, and she didn't like Hinge's user interface. Former dater Melody recently got into a relationship, but told me that when she was single, "I absolutely hated the apps but they also felt like the only way to put myself out there and meet people." She's introverted, and dating apps felt like volunteering to go on job interviews. "It's a lot of having the same conversation over and over until one person stops responding," she told me over Instagram. "I'm 34, and I got ghosted by a 34-year-old after six dates," a dater, Bella, told me at the Masterclass. She said she deleted Bumble because she was matching a lot but no one wanted to chat, and she didn't see the point. Out of daters I spoke to, both at the event and otherwise, only one spoke positively of dating apps: Lex, a queer polyamorous dater, who uses both he and they pronouns. "Personally, I've had pretty good experiences with dating apps," they told me over Instagram, describing positive dates and hookups. Still, Lex also described the downsides of the apps too (they're on Hinge and Feeld.) "There's a lot of cishet [cis and straight] dudes out there just swiping on everyone who would actually probably be dangerous for me to connect with," said Lex. "There's a lot of folks that you connect with and then things fizzle before you can ever even get to a date [because] you get busy and overwhelmed or they do. And there's plenty of folks who just don't really know what they want," he continued. A man I spoke to at the class, who declined to give his name, said that at 5'9", any woman who has their height filter on apps set to 5'10" won't see him. Height and dating is a hot topic lately, considering Tinder's new height preference test and the new movie Materialists (about matchmakers). As I wrote for Mashable, daters need to stop obsessing over height, because they could miss out on a great match because of a few inches. He typically has better luck meeting in person, but hasn't had a long-lasting partner since COVID. He's on Hinge and the Jewish dating app Lox Club, however, and attends IRL Lox Club events and speed dating events. Another man I spoke to, Kevin, called dating in 2025 "rough." He used to be on Tinder, but not anymore (and wouldn't elaborate why). Tara said she's prioritizing meeting IRL, "where I might meet someone and being in a space that feels like my aesthetic or my political values will be honored in that space." When we chatted, she discussed going to a debate watch party with supporters of Zohran Mamdani, a socialist candidate for New York City mayor. "I was like, 'That would be a good way to meet someone.' That's the hope," she said. But meeting in person isn't easy, either. Going out to meet people, especially alone, is intimidating in 2025. Tara's breakup knocked her confidence, she said, which makes it harder to strike up conversations with strangers. But she's been going out to a specific bar by herself to get in the habit of being more outgoing. "I think we're all nervous to just approach people," she said. Dater Trystan told me that dating is a non-starter lately. Men aren't interested in building a relationship, but they want a transaction and that's unappealing. "I've gotten off of the apps to focus on meeting people in person to avoid this," she told me over Instagram DM, "but it hasn't actually garnered a better experience for me. It feels like the culture has shifted." "I've always felt like dating apps are a tool, but you can't solely rely on them," said Dunn, who met her husband on Hinge. Apps will never replace real-world connections, conversation starters, or moments of spontaneity, Dunn told me. "I think it's really important that people learn how to meet in real life, especially when they want to so badly," she continued. "They just feel like they've been trained to swipe, not speak." One of the daters I spoke to at the masterclass said they came for any tips and tricks of meeting people in-person, or any tangible thing they can be doing — and affirmation that they're not alone. "Just general encouragements of, 'It's not you. You're not alone. You're not the only one struggling with dating and just meeting other people.'" She certainly wasn't: 75 people signed up for the class, and the room filled out by the time it began. At the start of the masterclass, Dunn said she knew it can feel bleak out there, and reiterated that people are swiping, not speaking. Here were her tips for meeting in person: Put down your phone, and pick up a glass of wine (the event was sponsored by the wine company Louis Jadot) Check your body language, not your phone Pay attention to the people around you — what are they drinking/doing? Set a goal: One glass of wine (you see where the sponsorship came in), one conversation with a stranger Send a glass of wine to someone across the bar (again) Women can make the first move Wear something comfortable to meet people Again: put your phone down Participants then asked questions, some about getting over the awkwardness of meeting strangers. Dunn said to lean into the awkwardness and even call it out. Working up courage dominated the conversation, as did — what else? — phones. The daters in the room disliked the discomfort and uncertainty of speaking to strangers, the exact way they want to find a partner. Our society has created such a dependence on phones that people are desperate to get off of them, but fear what that'd look like. We have the convenience of finding a partner at our fingertips, yet lack real connections. Afterwards, attendees hung around to drink more wine while Dunn chatted with them. I asked one of the attendees I spoke to beforehand what she thought of the class. She thought Dunn made some good points. "The phone thing was huge," she said.
New York Times
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
She Didn't Give Up on Her YouTube Dream — or on Love
Finding success as a YouTuber can be a dream come true. But it doesn't always lead to a satisfying love life — or so it seemed to Remi Ashten Cruz after building a devoted audience for her takes on everything from dorm décor to snack food. Miss Remi Ashten, the YouTube channel Ms. Cruz, 30, started in 2012, had spawned spinoff channels and podcasts that have won her five million followers across platforms. But finding men whose relationship goals matched her own in Los Angeles while helming various series including 'Pretty Basic,' the podcast she still hosts with her best friend, Alisha Marie McDonal, had been mostly a bust. 'A lot of guys were condescending about my career,' she said, because of its focus on what she called 'girl topics,' like trends and relationships. By the time Cal Robert Parsons, 29, reached out on Hinge in June 2019, she was ready to call it quits on dating altogether. 'I had officially given up,' Ms. Cruz said. She had told Ms. McDonal as much the day her phone pinged with a 'Cal messaged you' notification. 'We had just wrapped an episode, and I told her this guy Cal asked me out on a date,' she said. First, she responded to Mr. Parsons. 'Yeah, sure!' she wrote. 'Then I told my best friend, 'I'm not going on that date.'' Ms. Cruz is from Anaheim Hills, Calif. Her parents weren't thrilled when, in 2013, she told them of her plan to take a year off from college at the University of California, Riverside, where she was studying psychology, to focus on YouTube. She never went back. 'I had so much drive,' she said. 'I was posting every single day. I loved it. I still love it.' Mr. Parsons, 29, knew nothing about her onscreen persona when he asked her out. But 'I thought she was pretty,' he said. And Ms. Cruz's answers to a 'three things you love' question spoke to him. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
8 hours ago
- Business
- New York Times
His Four-Legged Wingman Helped to Seal the Deal
As Leland Holt Vittert's plane was taxiing at O'Hare International Airport in May 2021, a college friend, determined to find him a wife in Chicago, texted him. 'Thank you, but no,' replied Mr. Vittert, 42, who was then rebuilding his life in Chicago as a news anchor at NewsNation, then a start-up cable news channel. He had recently left Fox News as a Washington anchor and correspondent, became single and was hospitalized with Covid. Mr. Vittert's friend, undaunted by his lack of enthusiasm, sent him a photo of Rachel Ann Putnam the next day. His friend had teamed up with Ms. Putnam's friend, also on a mission to find her a husband after she became single in October 2020. 'Most of my friends were married and had kids,' said Ms. Putnam, 38, who grew up in Kenilworth, Ill., and attended Lake Forest College in Illinois. She is an owner of OMG Accessories, popular with young girls and teens, which she started in 2010. 'She's really beautiful,' Mr. Vittert recalled thinking when he saw the photo of her at a Chicago Blackhawks hockey game, and before he knew it, he introduced himself. 'Hi Rachel,' he texted. 'Leland here. So I guess people think we should meet.' Ten days later, they did at Avec River North, a Mediterranean restaurant with an extensive wine list. Mr. Vittert, who arrived early, texted her asking what she'd like to drink. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Daily Mail
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Sex-obsessed Jessica Hayes was the first Love Island winner. Now she reveals she's celibate... for a VERY surprising reason
, the first ever winner of Love Island in 2015, is reflecting on an extraordinary decade. Over the years the iconic ITV dating show has been running, more than 300 contestants have taken part – professing to be searching for love, only to find themselves caught up in public splits, scandals and shockers.
