From: Michael
To: Claire
Subject: Matched last night
Claire,
You’re a beautiful woman. I’m 62, divorced, with two grown children, and I develop commercial real estate.
I liked your smile, but I have to admit it was your eyes that made me write. There’s something very warm about them.
I’d like to know more about the woman behind them.
Michael
From: Claire
To: Michael
Subject: Re: Matched last night
Michael,
You sound like an interesting man. And thank you for the compliment.
Claire
From: Michael
To: Claire
Subject: Re: Matched last night
Claire,
I’m glad you answered.
I’ve been divorced for five years. I’ve met some lovely women, but no one who made me think I might want to build a life with someone again.
Then your picture appeared.
I realize that sounds forward. But at this point in life, I don’t see much reason to pretend I’m not interested when I am.
I’d very much like to know you better.
Michael
From: Claire
To: Michael
Subject: Re: Matched last night
Michael,
You are rather forward.
Claire
From: Michael
To: Claire
Subject: Re: Matched last night
Claire,
Guilty.
There’s something about you that makes me want to take the chance.
I’ve missed having a woman in my life. Someone to have dinner with at the end of the day, travel with, laugh with, and wake up beside on a Sunday morning.
When I saw you, I found myself imagining those things again.
I’d like to see where this might take us.
Unfortunately, I’m finishing a project out of town and won’t be back for several weeks. I hope you’ll let me keep getting to know you until then.
Michael
From: Claire
To: Michael
Subject: Re: Matched last night
Michael,
Get in touch when you’re back.
Claire
The next morning:
From: Michael
To: Claire
Subject: Good morning
Claire,
I woke up thinking about you this morning.
I keep going back to your photograph. That smile is becoming a serious distraction.
I have a dinner tonight that I’d happily trade for an evening with you.
Michael
Claire didn’t answer.
The following morning:
From: Michael
To: Claire
Subject: Good morning
Claire,
I’m beginning to think you’re going to make me work for your attention.
That may be another thing I like about you.
Michael
Claire deleted the message.
Michael may be exactly who he says he is. Or Claire may be corresponding with a scammer. Right now, she has no way to know.
You want to meet a man. You just don’t want to keep going through this to find him.
The dating industry knows it.
And it has a new answer: artificial intelligence.
AI is being promoted as a way to make online dating easier, safer, more successful—and less exhausting. It can help find better matches, weed out scammers, improve profiles, choose photographs, coach conversations and intervene when messages become offensive.
For women who are fed up with online dating, it looks like help may finally be on the way.
Until you look more closely at what some of this technology is doing.
The question is whether the dating apps are using AI to make your life easier—or theirs.
Will AI Get Scammers Off Dating Apps?
Scammers have plagued dating apps for years. You don’t have to have sent a scammer money to have had enough of them. You thought you were corresponding with an attractive man you might want to meet. Then you discovered there was no man to meet.
AI gives dating companies more ways to catch these accounts before they reach you.
Match Group now uses facial verification, fraud detection and other technology to identify fake or suspicious accounts. Tinder’s Face Check can also detect the same face being used on multiple accounts.
But that doesn’t mean the scammer problem has disappeared. Face Check is still being rolled out, so it isn’t required everywhere. And where it is being used, Match Group reports that it has reduced interactions with bad actors by more than half—but those interactions haven’t stopped.
Why are women still having to wonder whether the man they’re talking to is real? The apps have far more information about what’s happening than any woman using them ever will.
Will AI Keep Offensive Messages Off Dating Apps?
Here’s one reason some women have soured on online dating: one-third of online daters 50 and older say they’ve received a sexually explicit message or image.
Tinder is using AI to try to stop some of these messages before they reach you. Its “Are You Sure?” feature can detect potentially harmful language while a man is writing and warn him before he sends it.
He can send it anyway.
Tinder says the warning reduced potentially harmful messages by only about 10 percent.
Tinder also flags potentially offensive messages and asks whether you want to report the sender. Its “Does This Bother You?” feature increased reports of inappropriate messages by 46 percent. Tinder has also begun automatically blurring some potentially disrespectful messages.
AI is being sold as a way to make online dating easier. Yet here, Tinder uses it to warn the man—and still relies on the woman to report him.
Why?
Is AI Making Online Dating Easier?
AI can detect some of the very things that have made online dating so frustrating for women: scammers, fake accounts and offensive messages.
But a scammer can still get through. A man can still send the message Tinder warned him about. And once he does, the woman who receives it may still be asked whether she wants to report him.
If AI can recognize so much of what goes wrong on dating apps, why do women still have to encounter so much of it?
There’s more to this story. Part 2 is coming.
The technology is getting better. The question is whether your experience of dating gets better with it.
