“In the matchmaking app, if we ask you a question and your tonality changes in the answer, it means you are not telling us the whole truth. “We do this to simulate what a matchmaker would do for a client. LLM tracks the tone 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 many questions about lifestyle, future goals, boundaries, family, attractions, hobbies, etc. for a few days, Tai told me to take the information given and get back to me. Two days later, I received my first two potential matches.

I love you, Living Woman

As a 31-year-old woman, I put my ideal age range at a healthy 26 to 40 years old. My first two matches were 23 and 47. One was not alive when 9/11 happened, and the other had already graduated from college at the time. From a rocky start.

When a potential match is found, the person’s picture blurs, and Tai gives you a synopsis of what makes you a potential good match. (You’ll need to provide selfie verification to confirm identity, and no one who hasn’t been verified will be matched.) After that, you can click to see more about them, such as profession, age, income, and a short AI-generated bio.

At this stage of AI adoption, there is still a strong statistical bias toward, say, men wearing sunglasses walking around and thinking that driving a Cybertruck is a sign of masculinity. Almost every one of the 16 matches I received during the trial was Christian and wanted kids ASAP, which Tai flagged each time as a potential issue. Many are also initially flagged by Tai because they only want to date someone of a different race or value traditional gender roles, both of which I’ve made it clear I don’t agree with.

Because of the journalistic duty, I accept every game I receive; even an MMA-loving body builder who likes to grill meat (I’m vegan) and go to the gun range (I’m usually anti-gun). Matches range from Portland, Oregon, to DC, to New York City (where I live, although most of the matches are outside of NYC). Overall, not a single person I match with would be someone I would swipe right on if I saw them on a traditional dating app.

If you accept, you have to wait for the other person to accept or forward the match, or for them to accept, and you can start chatting. Here, your AI dating coach engages in playing wingman, providing prompts based on the other person’s profile, highlighting similarities between you, and providing conversational questions based on answers from the match’s profile. Not only does the coach provide potential ice breakers (and answers), you can also chat and ask for pointers.

Three Day Rule by Molly Higgins

I asked it to give me tips on how to break the ice with new matches, and it gave me advice, with each point having an explanatory paragraph below. Advice includes giving compliments, asking open-ended questions, using humor, discussing current events, sharing about yourself, and discussing mutual interests. The advice is basic but solid, and mirrors what the coach does with the given conversational prompts.

This is all a great idea in theory, and can be very helpful to people who have a hard time communicating with strangers. But it can also cause a bigger problem. You never know who you’re talking to when AI does all the chatting for you. And when you meet in person, you don’t know much about your date’s actual personality. You can tell a lot from the way people type, what questions they ask, and their sense of humor. All of that is gone here.