You know that feeling of anguish when you're trying to think of the perfect opening line on a dating app? Or when a match replies but you're stressing at work and simply don't have the capacity to think of something witty-but-chill-but-hilarious? Well, there's an app for that now.
Welcome to the world of AI dating assistant apps. No, this isn't about fake photos or virtual girlfriends. Instead, apps like Rizz and WingAI are generating opening lines and conversation replies - all you have to do is upload screenshots of the profiles or messages. You can select different conversation tones from "NSFW" to "casual", and the aim is to remove some of the burden of modern dating.
Feeling uneasy? Think this marks the end of authenticity in the sorry minefield that is already the online dating scene? That it'll never take off? Well, actually, a 2024 report by dating app Flirtini shows that a whopping 55 percent of people have already used AI, such as ChatGPT, to generate messages to send to dates. A 2024 study by McAfee shows that over one in four Americans (30 percent of men, 27 percent of women) also already use AI to enhance their dating profile - the next venture for Rizz and WingAI, and a feature already available on YourMoveAI.
So, who's actually using these apps then? Have you been reeled in by AI without knowing? And is it really as creepy as it seems? I speak to regular AI dating app users and other daters to find out whether it's the next frontier of modern dating.
Artem, a 35-year-old accountant from Miami has been on Rizz for around eight months and uses it to replace pestering the group chat. "My friends are much funnier than me, so I'd often workshop clever responses with them for a match," he says. "But obviously, I can't lean on them all the time and the AI app is available 24/7."
As for how it works, for memorable openers he uploads a screenshot of his match's dating profile and chooses the tone of "Rizz" - a relatively spicy, cheeky mode. The app suggests a selection of opening lines relating to the profile and Artem hits refresh, or adds in key words to focus on, until he finds one that suits. For help with conversations already on the go, he uploads a screenshot of the exchange and receives suggestions for his reply. Artem rarely copies and pastes directly, instead he uses the suggestions to get his own creative juices flowing.
"The other day it gave me the opening line of, 'If you had a third nipple, where would it be?' which I obviously didn't use, but it got me thinking," he says. "The girl I was talking to had loads of tattoos, so I asked her, 'If you had a tattoo and you could never show anyone, what would it be?'" Another reportedly successful opener - this time, for a woman who worked for a non-profit - reads: "Hey, so I'm hosting this charity event next week for people who can't reach orgasm. If you can't cum, please let me know."
I'll just let that sit for a bit.
I really did try to keep an open mind, but both of those lines pretty much turned my stomach. The cringe factor is toe curling, obviously, but the sexual innuendo side is just downright uncomfortable - a consistent problem I noticed when messing about on the apps myself. Practically 99 percent of the suggestions I got were unsendable, and if I'd received them from someone else, it'd likely be an immediate block . (Notably: "Hey there, amazing mind! Your intellect is arousing, but so is that naughty tongue of yours. wink") The apps claim to be trained with the help of male and female dating coaches, but surely no woman would sign that off?
Artem insists it pays off with practice, though. His main reason for loving the app is down to dating fatigue - basically burnout and exhaustion from meeting new people and it going nowhere. "There's an element of exhaustion, for sure," he says. "Chatting with one person is cool and fun, but it can be emotionally draining when you end up speaking to five or eight people at once while you try to decide who to choose to focus on." Using Rizz means he can devote less bandwidth to coming up with the kind of clever one-liners that reap success in the Tinder world.
This echoes a wider sentiment from app daters these days - that the process has somewhat lost its sheen and is now just a means to an end. A 2024 study by Forbes Health found that 79 percent of Gen Z report dating app burnout, with women feeling it more at 80 percent compared to 74 percent of males.
That's why Taylor, a 30-year-old vet from Florida, uses WingAI. "If I have one more, 'Hey, what's up? How are you?' conversation I'm done," she says. "Using the app opens the conversation up more, in a fun way. It helps with the fatigue and makes it more interesting."
Doesn't all of this just create more admin in the dating process, though? Apparently not. "I was already going back and forth on Google, searching for fun openers relating to certain jobs," she says, a method Artem also used to use. Taylor uses WingAI to inspire her first lines on Bumble but, like Artem, always edits the suggestion to make it sound more like her personality. "I don't always like the ideas, but they give me an idea of where to go with it," she says. "I make sure it's a bit of a hybrid between me and the app."
As for the authenticity of it all, Taylor thinks it's only as inauthentic as the rest of online dating. "Dating on the apps is always fake and superficial to begin with. You match based on what someone looks like and the highly curated persona they put out there," she says. "As long as AI isn't having the entire conversation for you, I don't see the problem."
It's a fair point. Polishing your profile can take hours, weeks and more friends than you've had dates. The witty Hinge prompt that sold you on someone could easily be their bezzie mate's humour, not theirs. There are the outright liars to consider, too: According to a recent Forbes Health survey, close to one in five adults polled claim to lie about their age, with men even more likely to tweak their numbers at 23 percent compared to 19 percentof women. Other reported fibs include income (14 percent), height (12 percent), as well as hobbies and interests (14 percent). Think of all the people paying for premium dating app accounts as well, which offer various leg-ups like sorting your potential matches by who's most likely to be responsive - whether that's a new member or someone active today.
Bangalore-based Dhruv, 25, agrees with Taylor. "If I completely relied on the app suggestions and didn't work in my personality then, yes, it would be an inauthentic representation of myself," says the UX designer who's been using DatingAI.pro regularly for the past three months. "But I'd also screw up big time when it comes to actually meeting in-person." He believes you can hardly trick someone into a relationship through using an AI app because texting is such a small part of building that spark - you have to meet them or speak to them at some point.
"The app is more about effective initial exchanges and assisting me to be my best self," adds Artem. "Each user is still making the decisions about what to send and what not to send. For every line I use, there might be 12 that I throw away."
So how successful is it, actually? Dhruv claims he's already seen drastic results: "I used to receive one to two matches per week, but after using DatingAI I've started receiving six or seven." This success rate is even higher than the hefty promise WingAI makes of increasing your reply rate by 250 percent. Artem feels like his success has stayed the same, but the app has grown his confidence and lowered his stress levels. He sees no shame in using the app, either. "I'm 35, so when I was in high school dating apps didn't exist and people meeting on the internet was a huge stigma," he continues. "But now the internet and dating on the internet is our default. I don't see why these apps wouldn't become a normal part of the process."
But what do daters who've never heard of these apps think of all this? London-based Talia, 31, thought it sounded like a slippery slope in the already confusing dating game at first. "If this becomes the norm, surely it means so much extra time wasted going on dates only to find they're nothing like they came across in their messages?" she says. After more consideration, though, she was thrilled at the prospect of more interesting conversations, but actually testing the apps left her disappointed. "If they gave genuinely good suggestions, I'd be all over it.
I find myself in Talia's camp. Frankly, I'm a convert to the actual concept in theory. But the current offerings just don't hit well enough yet. There's the price point to consider, too: YourMoveAI is £4.99 per week (scaling cheaper per month and year), WingAI and Rizz are flat fees of £6.99 and a whopping £9.99 per week, respectively.
And the biggest point of all still looms large: asking a non-sentient computer program that isn't capable of love or sex is simply not the same as asking a friend you know and trust, a real-life person who's actually been on dates before. Plus, could these apps be teaching a whole generation of men with poor flirting or social skills that it's normal to start off conversations with such inappropriate sexual innuendos? And it is mostly men. Rizz members are currently 66 percent male, while YourMove.AI's rises to 85 percent and DatingAI.pro a whopping 99 percent.
If the apps can get cheaper and better, they could change the dating game. But more women, and perhaps young people who actually have game, need to be brought in to help programme the software. What do women want? Well, it's certainly not to be asked about third nipples.
