This text is taken from Courrier de l’ économique. Click here to subscribe.
In business, it is said, half-jokingly, half-seriously (and often in somewhat cruder terms…), that when the love industry adopts a new technology, it is a sign of its mainstream success. future. So when we saw, following the launch by OpenAI of a store of AI applications created by third parties based on its GPT language model, that “virtual soulmates” were the most downloaded apps there , and from afar, we knew that generative AI was here for good.
But this phenomenon is actually a little stranger than a simple evolution of platforms that distribute olé olé content. Because since ChatGPT went online, we have seen the emergence of several applications that present themselves as a virtual girlfriend or boyfriend for lonely people, and the latter rush towards these digital avatars as if there were no the next day.
We have even already found a name for these people who prefer to spend their free time chatting with an intimate virtual agent: botsexuals.
It must be said that these AI applications have everything going for them: not only do they speak the language of love, but they can also express emotions that are very close to being true in several languages, in a completely natural way. Enough to seduce, literally and figuratively, long-term singles who are used to conversing in writing on their favorite dating service… and who are tired of always dialing the wrong number.
Seduce in the age of AI
Those who are not seduced can still use AI as an advisor to find true love, even if it means automating the first, somewhat repetitive, stages of their romantic encounters.
This is how a young Russian programmer called Aleksandr Jadan managed to find his future wife: he put his own version of ChatGPT in contact with 5,000 users of the dating service Tinder, and after a few automated exchanges, ChatGPT gave him presented the rare pearl.
Obviously, he knew she was the one when the young woman simply shrugged her shoulders upon learning that all this time, she had been interacting with an AI rather than with a real human… Others would no doubt have taken the escape immediately.
In any case, users of dating services will have to get used to it: AI is expected to play an increasingly important role in the quest for the better half. For example, the Bumble app has used AI since 2019 to spot fake profile photos and fake accounts. Its managers assure that it works 95% of the time.
Match Group, the company that owns Tinder, Hinge, Match, OkCupid and a dozen other online dating services, created a new division last fall specializing in AI.
At Match, we believe that AI can help people choose the profile photo and write the description that will have the best chance of attracting more or less languid glances. It is also predicted that it will help prevent the meeting on these services of people who have too few hooked atoms in order to avoid unnecessary expenditure of energy.
If technology is used more and more in love and intimacy, everything indicates that the purest chance has never had such a bad reputation. Don’t we say, however, that true love is like a butterfly, and that if we chase it too much, we end up making it flee?
We’ll know soon enough if AI is capable of playing serial matchmaker. Match Group promises that its new automated services will be activated this summer at the latest.
We may also have an answer to this question that no one has ever really asked: what if Cupid was a robot?