Standing in front of the pub, 36-year-old entrepreneur Rachel took one last drag from her vape and prepared to meet the man she had been confiding in for the past three weeks. They had connected on the dating app Hinge and developed a bond that soon deepened. “From the start, he was asking very open-ended questions, which was refreshing,” Rachel notes. One initial message from him stated: “I’ve recently been reading about attachment styles; it’s helped me understand myself better – and what kind of partner I should seek. Have you ever explored yours? Do you know your attachment style?” “It felt as if he was truly attempting to learn more about me on a personal level. The questions were much more insightful than the usual, ‘How was your day?’” she adds.
Before long, Rachel and her match were chatting daily, covering subjects ranging from the silly (favorite memes, ketchup versus mayonnaise) to the profound (expectations in romance, childhood issues). Frequently, they would have late-night conversations that kept her glued to her phone long past her bedtime. “They felt like topics from self-help books – deep discussions about our identities and aspirations,” she explains.
This is why the man who welcomed her inside the pub – courteous, enjoyable but strangely mundane – felt unfamiliar. The quick wit and lively exchange she had come to expect were absent. Over pints, he faltered through small talk, checked his phone too often, and seemed to struggle under the weight of her inquiries. “I felt as though I was sitting across from someone I’d never spoken to before,” she recalls. “I tried to mirror the same type of conversation we had online, but it was as if I was asking, ‘Knock, knock, is anyone home?’ – like he knew virtually nothing about me. At that moment, I suspected he might have been using AI.”
Rachel decided to give her date a chance. “Maybe he was just nervous,” she thought. However, having been “Chatfished” in the past, when the disparity between his real and digital personas didn’t resolve on their second date, she ended it. “I’d already been ChatGPT-ed into bed at least once. I didn’t want it to happen again.”
Where once daters were misled by blurry pictures and borrowed pickup lines, they are now lured in by ChatGPT-enhanced banter and AI-generated charisma. Dating app exhaustion is an age-old issue; while promising convenience and endless options, the gamified approach to finding love in the age of apps has, over time, left many feeling disposable. Moreover, as AI becomes increasingly embedded in aspects of everyday life – from healthcare to online grocery shopping – it adds another layer of digital artificiality to the quest for romance.
In a realm where text-based communication dominates the pursuit of love, it is perhaps not surprising that some individuals turn to AI for support – not everyone is skilled at texting. Some Chatfishers, however, go to extreme lengths, outsourcing entire conversations to ChatGPT, leaving their match stuck in a nightmarish distortion: believing they are forging a real connection with another person, when in truth they are simply engaging with an algorithm designed to reflect their own desires.
Most Chatfishers affirm they would never dream of letting AI take over their conversations entirely. Many are like 38-year-old Nick from London, who utilizes it as a tool to cultivate meaningful connections with app matches. He works in technology and shares an open relationship with his girlfriend; both casually date other people. He occasionally employs ChatGPT in his chats on dating apps Feeld and Bumble. “If I’m using a dating app,” he states, “I want to initiate conversations that feel significant right from the start to engage the other person – without spending too much time on it. At the same time, while I want it to be ‘meaningful,’ I don’t necessarily want to delve into heavy emotions immediately – it feels like quite the balancing act.” ChatGPT, he explains, aids him in maintaining that balance: providing enough charm to ignite a connection without the emotional investment that may feel wasted if the interaction fizzles out after a few messages.
ChatGPT isn’t beneficial for Nick “if I feel a genuine connection with someone and the dialogue is natural – because what’s the point then?” On the contrary, if he’s matched with someone and the conversation stalls, perhaps becoming tedious but the individual is attractive or captivating, then he might request, “Please generate a good, engaging, funny response to keep the dialogue flowing.” He never pastes full responses – “ChatGPT articulates things in a very recognizable manner,” he observes – but he draws inspiration from it, or employs lines and phrases that resemble his own style. Still, he concedes there’s a subtle slippage when one begins to filter oneself through a robot. “It may have generated certain responses I wouldn’t typically say or aren’t entirely me, but I went along with them regardless. In that sense, it likely influenced what someone thinks of me,” he says. “But I don’t consider it dishonest. I’m authentically myself on the dating app – just maybe asking better questions.”
For the past three months, 28-year-old social worker Holly from Kent has been navigating a “situationship” with a colleague. Although they were familiar from the workplace, they initially started communicating through LinkedIn. Now, they meet occasionally – “I wouldn’t label them as dates,” Holly quips – but frequently chat via WhatsApp. “I primarily utilize AI because I tend to write very lengthy messages,” she explains, “so I’ll input them into ChatGPT and say, ‘Please make this softer and clearer’, or, ‘I need to seem stricter here so he understands I’m upset.’” She doesn’t view it as misleading – “I’m not aiming to manipulate anyone,” she asserts.
Her narrative perhaps illustrates how relationship dynamics have transformed in recent years. According to a 2024 YouGov poll, around half of Americans aged 18-34 reported experiencing a situationship (defined as “a romantic connection that exists in a gray area, neither strictly platonic nor officially a committed relationship,” much like Holly). Simultaneously, few of us have honed the communication skills necessary to navigate the emotional ambiguity presented by less stable relationship borders. For Holly, having AI refine her messages allows her to find the proper balance between honesty and diplomacy: “Sometimes it assists me in sounding kinder when I’m angry.” Nevertheless, she claims she would never disclose to her situationship that she utilizes AI for messaging – “and I suppose he views me as less reactive and more understanding because of how my messages are.”
As 32-year-old Rich observes, though, “using ChatGPT doesn’t ensure success.” When he met someone in a bar one Friday night and exchanged social media details, he sought AI’s advice on his next approach. ChatGPT determined that sending an initial message on Monday mid-morning would establish an ideal pace. “It also offered options for what the message could be,” Rich recounts. “Keep it light, warm, and low-pressure so it reflects genuine interest without urgency,” the bot suggested. “Something like: Hey Sarah, still chuckling about [tiny shared moment/reference if you’ve got one] – it was great meeting you!” Rich consulted with ChatGPT until he felt they’d crafted the perfect message (“Hey Sarah, it was lovely to meet you”), but unfortunately, she never responded, he laments. “It’s been two weeks now.”
When ChatGPT’s polish becomes apparent, it can have the opposite effect of what was intended. “I lose interest rapidly,” states 35-year-old Nina, who serves as an editor for a Serbian language website in Manchester. She recently received an AI-generated opening line: “Your smile is effortlessly captivating.” “No one speaks like that,” she comments. She didn’t bother to respond. Having been single for three years, she uses Hinge and Bumble. She has also turned to AI to help enhance her profiles: “It essentially advised me to present myself as more confident and positive,” she explains. “I’ve sought help with opening lines, especially when I was uncertain about what to say. On one or two occasions, I suspected my matches were using it on me as well – their replies seemed overly refined, as if they weren’t truly listening. It’s helpful in some ways, but it does make me question what’s authentic.”
Jamil, 25, from Leicester, admits to being a frequent Chatfisher but contends that AI is merely a workaround for what he perceives as the convoluted jargon of contemporary dating. “What does ‘What’s my attachment style?’ even mean?” he scoffs. “Every girl on the apps talks about ‘love languages’ – it’s just nonsensical, but if you don’t engage with it, people consider you a ‘red flag.’”
Initially, he resorted to ChatGPT out of necessity. “It was just a quick fix,” he reflects. Working in an IT help desk, he found himself trying to keep a conversation going with an attractive girl while feeling overwhelmed at work. “I asked ChatGPT what ‘avoidant attachment style’ meant because a girl mentioned that this was how she’d been described, and it explained it, then prompted me with, ‘Would you like me to craft a response?’ So I opted in. I felt overwhelmed and was rather busy that day. I thought she was attractive, so I wanted to maintain the momentum.” The reply – “I think mine is ‘clingy but with snacks’, so perhaps we’ll complement each other” – was successful. “She sent a few skull emojis, indicating she was dying of laughter. I mentioned I’d have to message her later due to work, and she asked if I wanted to meet – so yeah, I was like, ‘Wow, this works.’”
Francesca, 33, runs a digital marketing agency in Cardiff. Like Jamil, she explains that ChatGPT provides her access to a web of implicit meanings and subtext that she could otherwise struggle to navigate. “As an autistic woman in an age where the only way to connect with people is through dating apps, I have found it incredibly challenging. Understanding tone and ‘the rules’ felt impossible, so ChatGPT has been incredibly helpful,” she shares. Initially, when she began using it in dating contexts, it was more of a digital sounding board – an impartial presence that would provide feedback on her profile and conduct debriefs after dates.
“I copied all the Hinge prompts [the questions users complete in their profile] into ChatGPT and said, ‘Given your knowledge of me, select the most suitable prompts and provide a good answer,’” she recounts. The bot responded: “Based on everything I understand about you – creative, self-aware, and emotionally intelligent … I would recommend choosing one of these Hinge prompts ….”
She didn’t copy them verbatim, Francesca states, but it offered her plenty of inspiration. Regardless, it still felt authentically her because the bot utilized what it knew about her from their regular interactions – “AI has integrated into numerous areas of my business,” she notes – summarizing it into succinct, playful language suitable for a dating app. “It wasn’t crafting me a new identity.”
It wasn’t until she matched with a man she found hard to read that she began using ChatGPT for messaging. “Our exchanges prior to meeting had been very good [without any AI assistance] but in person, he wasn’t very flirtatious or forward and didn’t try to kiss me at the end of our first date. I wondered if he wasn’t truly attracted to me or just being respectful,” she remembers. She took screenshots of their recent messages, inputted the conversations along with a brief description of their date – a blustery walk around a lake – into ChatGPT and requested it to gauge the situation for her. The reply, helpfully clinical, inferred he was likely being respectful rather than disinterested and suggested a light, open-ended follow-up. She sent a version of the recommended response, he replied enthusiastically, and they set up a second date. “I was like, ‘Oh ChatGPT was right, he did want to see me again.’”
After that, she found herself consulting the bot before every message, requesting multiple variations before selecting the one that resonated most with her. “Over the week, I realized I was depending on it quite heavily,” she admits. “Then I thought, you know what, that’s okay – why not let ChatGPT manage my love life?”
By the time they reached their third date, however, “I was relying on ChatGPT for all our communication,” Francesca shares. “I didn’t even respond anymore – he was essentially dating ChatGPT.” In-person, their meetings continued to lack excitement. “I became acutely aware that I had taken it too far, yet I felt trapped because I didn’t know how to interact with this person as my genuine self anymore.”
Jamil experienced a similar cognitive dissonance while sitting across from a woman he had Chatfished into a date. “Probably within a week of that first message, I was using ChatGPT for every interaction on dating apps,” he mentions. On Discord, a communication platform favored by gamers and tech circles, he discovered channels dedicated to AI where other single men traded tips on how to prompt ChatGPT for effective dating messages. “For instance, someone noted that if you begin a chat with a girl by asking her a series of questions – favorite movie, dream vacation, that sort of thing – then paste her answers into ChatGPT, it would generate responses that would portray you as her perfect match.” This tactic proved successful. “It resulted in significantly more dates than I previously had.”
ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM), which functions by identifying patterns in language – the bot would recognize keywords and themes in his match’s responses and weave them into jokes, compliments, or echoes of shared interests. Where Jamil might have simply commented “nice” or “cool,” the bot would craft a playful line about his match’s fondness for Bali tied into coconut cocktails. This made him appear attentive at least. Jamil asserts he doesn’t feel he deceives anyone; he regards it as more of a clever maneuvering within the apps. “Dating apps disadvantage everyone – you’re competing with hundreds for attention, and often conversations fizzle after just a few messages. If ChatGPT helps me stand out, why wouldn’t I utilize it?”
Nevertheless, one date left him with a sense of guilt. He was engaged in the usual copy-and-paste strategy, allowing ChatGPT to do the labor, “when a girl discussed having experienced a loss in her family.” ChatGPT addressed her grief with poised empathy, synthesizing sympathy that made Jamil seem emotionally astute. “It responded with something like, ‘I’m so sorry you’re experiencing this; it must be incredibly challenging – thank you for sharing it with me,’” he remembers. When he met her in real life, she praised his supportive nature in their messages. “I felt bad – I think that was the only time I thought it was somewhat deceitful. I didn’t disclose that I used ChatGPT, but I genuinely attempted to message her myself after that.”
Lately, he mentions that he has faced being found out more frequently. “People are starting to say outright, ‘This sounds fake,’ even if I’m not just pasting responses. More users are utilizing AI now, so they can detect it. I think the golden age of letting it handle all your messaging has faded.”
Francesca had a wake-up moment when a simple error almost exposed her. She pasted a witty message crafted by ChatGPT into her WhatsApp chat with a date, only to realize it concluded with the signature bot prompt: “Would you like me to make this more engaging?” It wasn’t until his puzzled response – “What do you mean?” – that she became aware of her blunder. “I just felt, Oh no, I’ve been caught,” she confides. She left his inquiry unaddressed for several hours, deciding the only option was to pretend that part was meant for a colleague.
“We went on one more date afterward, but I wasn’t certain whether he was interested in me or not, so I let it slide. I thought, ‘I’m not inclined to analyze every interaction to determine if he’s into me.’ And at that point, 90% of the messages he’d received from me had been via ChatGPT, so it wasn’t like we’d genuinely gotten to know each other – he was essentially dating the AI.”
For Paul C Brunson, dating expert and one of the advisors currently mentoring contestants on Married at First Sight UK, there exists a distinction between leveraging AI as a support tool and outright fabricating information. “AI is remarkable and has the potential to assist many individuals – of course, it depends on how much someone leans on it and the intent behind their usage. For numerous people, it merely serves as an enhancement that facilitates better connections.” According to him, the primary dating recommendation will always be to meet your matches as soon as feasible. “It’s the optimal way to assess if you’re a compatible match – you have the opportunity to observe their behavior and determine if they seem trustworthy. Did they follow through on their promises? Were you attracted to them physically? How was the communication when you were sitting across from one another? AI doesn’t influence any of that – it is merely a tool to foster the meetup.” Equally, he indicates that most of us understand that “completely misrepresenting yourself – essentially lying – doesn’t belong in modern dating. The vast majority would recognize when they’ve crossed that threshold.”
The issue, as Rachel perceives it, is that some individuals will intentionally transgress that boundary. “Before AI, it was like, fine, maybe your pictures aren’t quite accurate,” she states, “and that’s annoying but you’d be uncovered swiftly. Now, however, people present entirely new identities.” She discusses having been on the receiving end of techniques similar to those utilized by Jamil – being subjected to probing questions, “like you’re completing a job interview,” then after that, “having discussions that feel as if the other person has a direct line to my thoughts because everything they express is so perfectly tailored to me.”
The worst instance, she recounts, was when she matched with an attractive man. “It’s a sweeping generalization – but I assumed he would be all looks and no depth,” she admits. It was an unexpected delight, then, when their digital discussion flowed seamlessly, revealing their many commonalities. “I thought I had found the ideal man. At some point, I mentioned how much I adored going for walks, and he responded, ‘I know this place with fantastic lavender fields, I’m going to take you there.’ I mean, I was used to dating individuals who didn’t even get me a card for my birthday – and this man was proposing to take me to see lavender fields? I felt as if he was genuinely tuning into me.”
Their date went wonderfully, carried along by the buoyancy of days filled with intense messaging. “We got somewhat inebriated and ended up sleeping together – I was swept away by everything,” she recounts. After that meeting, however, the messages shifted – the once-flowing sentences rich with inquiries and light-hearted banter were replaced by terse replies, coming after long delays. She shared the conversation with a friend, who was the first to remark that many of his messages bore the hallmarks of being generated by ChatGPT. Lacking experience with AI, her friend was not on alert for the unique rhythms and elongated dashes. “Perhaps I was naïve, but when you’re seeking love and someone arrives who says all the right things, aligns with your thoughts, you aren’t thinking, ‘He must be a bot,’ you’re thinking you’ve just found Prince Charming.”
If ghosting was the primary risk of early app dating, Chatfishing might be its AI-era successor. The emergence of ChatGPT in our romantic lives could merely reflect feelings of fatigue: after years of swiping and stilted interactions, who wouldn’t be drawn to a digital dating aide, promising effortless wit? Dating apps compel us to perceive romance as a marketplace, filled with limitless options, where we are products to be optimized. AI merely extends that principle – and if the right phrase, the right tone, can garner us a bit more attention, why wouldn’t we adopt it?
However, the secrecy surrounding this issue is telling. The fact that many daters conceal their dependence on AI indicates that, deep down, we understand true intimacy requires vulnerability. Having a chatbot facilitate our flirtations – even if just in the initial stages – risks extinguishing the elusive spark that only emerges in unplanned moments. Even more troubling, as Rachel’s lavender-field letdown illustrates, the race for more matches, at greater speed, can leave others feeling exploited, misled, and questioning what’s authentic. Dating may merely be a trial run; as AI permeates further into every aspect of our lives, the urge to sanitize the chaos, to smooth over the hesitations and imperfections that constitute our humanity, will undoubtedly escalate. What occurs when no interaction is genuinely person-to-person anymore? When we’re all conversing within echo chambers, hearing our own words reflected back at us?
Ultimately, there is no substitute for genuine connection. “Dating apps are somewhat misnamed,” Brunson observes. “They should more aptly be referred to as ‘introduction apps’, as they are merely intended to introduce you to potential partners. The rest needs to occur in person – that’s where you uncover if there’s chemistry. And no algorithm can accomplish that part for us.”
