Last week, the most handsome man I have ever seen in my life ‘liked’ me on a dating app. He called himself ‘D’ and listed his job as ‘director’. My suspicions were aroused. I have a perfectly healthy self-image, but a 36-year-old director who looks like Chris Hemsworth on a good day? I don’t think so.
‘He’s AI,’ said a friend on a WhatsApp group with whom I’d shared his picture, adding: ‘You idiot.’ It was that moment I realised just how pervasive – and believable – AI profiles are on dating apps. Great, yet another pitfall of midlife dating.
Further investigation reveals that it’s even worse than I thought. Lots of online daters use AI to polish their profiles, says a Norton Insights Report called – horror – Artificial Intimacy. Apparently, 57 per cent use it for writing pick-up lines, 56 per cent for enhancing their photos, and 54 per cent for developing their profile.
So, more than half of what you’re seeing isn’t real!
And it’s not just people’s profiles that have been enhanced. AI tools have been created to help with conversation, too.
That means you might be talking to an algorithm rather than a person. Take Rizz, an app which helps users create witty and personalised responses. Cyrano de Bergerac for the AI age.
‘It is normal to try to look and sound nicer,’ says Leyla Bilge, global head of scam research for Norton. ‘And it’s super attractive in dating because you can easily remove imperfections.’
She says imperfections, I say ‘reality’. This is all obviously massively open to abuse, of course. It’s difficult to know whether a profile like D’s is a real person using AI to make themselves look better or, as my friend suggests, a bot trying to scam you.
Alice Smellie has been on and off dating apps for the last couple of years with varying success, but now the rise of AI profiles has shaken her trust
Some real users are using AI to reply to messages or enhance their profiles, furthering the difficulties of finding genuine people
But, if it’s the former, surely you are eventually going to catch them out, or if you meet in person?
That might not matter to them, says Leyla. ‘It feels desperate but even the chance to meet once might be enough for people to go down the AI route.’
A friend in her late 50s says that she feels apps are often about validation rather than genuinely seeking relationships.
‘I often match with men, and then hear nothing from them,’ she says.
‘We both feel better about ourselves and move on!’ As if it’s not hard enough being a single, 53-year-old woman living in the country. I have (wo)manfully been on and off dating apps for a couple of years with varying degrees of success. Of course, we all sanitise ourselves to some extent.
Now I discover that the men might be even less authentic than I thought.
Another friend tells me about a similar situation.
‘We quickly moved off the app on to WhatsApp. He was devastatingly handsome, really witty, and really seemed to get me, responding quickly to all my messages. I really fell for him but even though he was in London, like me, he was never available to meet.’ Eventually she realised it wasn’t going anywhere and blocked him.
‘There was always something too perfect about him. I now suspect that he wasn’t what he seemed. The problem is that there are so few reasonable-sounding men on the apps. It was very disappointing.’
Midlife women are less likely to suspect the presence of AI on their dating apps, according to psychologist Marisa Peer
‘Women in midlife are more vulnerable for a number of reasons,’ says leading psychologist Marisa Peer. ‘There is a limited pool of men, and women may feel that everything is stacked against them.’
She does insist that if we are taken in, we aren’t stupid.
‘We are wired to find connection and if you find it, even if it’s artificial, you take it in any way you can. When it comes to a battle between emotion and logic, logic never wins.’
Midlife women are also, she points out, less likely to suspect the presence of AI on their dating apps, let alone use it themselves.
This is true enough for myself. I won’t even use filters on my uploaded photos, let alone employ AI to ‘scam’ unsuspecting suitors.
Sadly, it’s estimated that one in 20 people over 65 encounter romance scams weekly. I suspect, partly because of the shame, this figure is far higher. It’s bad enough having to be on dating apps.
‘People don’t want to admit that they’ve been scammed,’ says Peer.
That said I am pretty sure that most middle-aged men I see on dating apps aren’t using AI – there are far too many normal-looking bodies and non-Hollywood teeth!
Norton is currently working on a program to detect deep fakes (the name given to flag up suspicious-looking images or videos).
‘In the context of dating, we know that over 60 per cent of people want to know whether the profile is AI-generated, so this is going to become common practice,’ says Leyla.
‘As more people seek connection through apps, chatbots and digital tools, it’s critical to pause, protect personal information, and remember that real trust should never come with pressure or secrecy.’
My current dating pics have been stringently vetted by my 17-year-old daughter (‘Not that one, you look bossy,’ etc) but I still get very little interest.
Out of curiosity, I upload a few photos of myself to an AI website. The results are startling. The glossy ‘new’ me has a Hollywood smile, impeccable teeth and much larger boobs. I look as though I’ve been varnished, and rather smug.
For research purposes, I post one of these images as my main pic on two dating apps – Inner Circle and Bumble – leaving my other pictures on these sites alone, so I’m not accused of ‘catfishing’.
To my raging disappointment, not only does the number of men ‘liking’ me go up quite significantly, but their age drops, even though I still put my real age. I’m conflicted by my short-lived experiment.
I get some pleasant and non-AI-sounding messages. How annoying. I thought I was enough. Clearly not.
Meanwhile, back to ‘D’. We exchanged chatty and witty, messages, He even suggested taking our talk on to WhatsApp. I like to think ‘D’ has used AI to make himself look more of a catch, rather than being a bot with nefarious intentions.
But, either way, he won’t be getting my number.
