Will AI help you find your soul mate?

GUEST EXPERT. What could be better than a light subject, or not light at all, to end this summer which was clearly disappointing in terms of weather and which was probably very conducive to the breakup of many couples lacking vitamin D and heat?

You won’t be surprised if I tell you that the search for your loved one in 2023 has absolutely nothing to do with what it was just 10 years ago… In fact, the first online dating site dates back well before that: it was in 1995 that “Match.com” went online! It was the beginning of an industry that today is no longer a shadow of what it was back then. At the start of my twenties, sites such as “Réseau Contact” were appearing. Already, the change was drastic. The notion of seduction lost a little of its flavor, or at least its charm. In 2012, the arrival of Tinder really shook things up. That year my first baby boy was born, so I didn’t experience those Tinder days. However, it seems that meeting someone was now almost as easy as ordering a pizza…

All the platforms that followed the arrival of Tinder followed suit in this race which became a race for “fast food”, abandoning the primary objective of making you meet the right person. Then, little by little, new technologies appeared in these applications.

However, did you know that no less than 17% of people who get married today met online according to a study by the Statistic Brain Research Institute? So, it seems to work for many people! It is also estimated that since the creation of dating sites, nearly 49 million individuals have created an online profile to find their better half. Imagine the number of “dates” that resulted from this and above all the immense potential of this market in the eyes of investors.

From “deepfake”, to algorithms that identify the “perfect match” for you, to robots that write messages on your behalf to find your soul mate, clearly he has serious questions to ask himself about how we are looking for a life partner and above all to determine who the person behind these exchanges really is. Are we in a world where beauty, personality fit and values ​​between two people can now be determined by artificial intelligence? Well, unfortunately, we are not far from it…

For example, a recent study showed that 20% of men used ChatGPT to generate their profile in addition to writing personalized messages to their suitors. Obviously, I don’t think anyone would want to know that it was an AI that tried to charm you rather than the person themselves. But this trend is far from wanting to reverse itself, considering that the same study revealed that 37% of respondents felt more confident towards the opposite sex when using this tool.

When it’s ChatGPT who writes exchanges on social networks for you in order to charm the other person, do you think it’s really from your heart that you’re speaking? The use of conversational robots is already widespread in this type of exchange. It goes without saying that I always find it easy to be amazed by the new feats of technology, but when it comes to dehumanizing something so intrinsically human, I think it becomes important to take a pause and reflect to the real impact of the technologies available on these dating sites.

I have just talked to you about technologies that already exist and are now widely used in the dating field. But what awaits us in the future?

First, know that meetings between two people in a parallel universe are happening much faster than we think with technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality. You will soon be able to date someone who lives in another city and have a date at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, all from the comfort of your living room. Apps like Tinder are talking about implementing a new AI-powered feature that aims to suggest dates to their customers. Companies are even looking into integrating genetic profiles and even DNA into dating profiles, because it is scientifically proven that these two factors have a role to play in attraction between individuals.

In a few years, it’s a safe bet that you will no longer have to “swipe” left or right, because the application will do it for you. The AI ​​will know what common interest you share and who knows, may even offer you show tickets between your house and its own. In the end, we can seriously question whether artificial intelligence will really have the power to decipher one of the most complex human emotions, namely love.

I still dare to hope that human nature will resist falling into what may seem like a simple gain of time, but which will in fact result in a potential loss of knowledge of who we really are and especially what we really need to be happy with another person!