Artificial intelligence for dating? Yep, it’s happening and this topic took center stage at the recent four-day Web Summit in Lisbon, reports Channel NewsAsia.
Now AI is being employed in dating apps to help users discover places for first dates, say all the right words and find love with a doppelganger of your favorite celebrity, the outlet says.
Swipe fatigue users frustrated by dating apps such as Tinder spurred the sector’s growing use of artificial intelligence to clear the path for romantic connections by helping to arrange meetings and coach romantic hopefuls.
eHarmony, for example, revealing an upcoming AI-enabled feature that will nudge users with suggestions to finally take their flirting offline and meet in person if the pair has been chatting in app for a long period of time.
"There is a lot of activity on dating apps but by and large there is not a lot of dates," eHarmony CEO Grant Langston said before the crowd at the summit.
"Guys don't know how to ask, it's astounding really how many people need help and we think we can do that in an automated way."
eHarmony is not the only company with plans to use AI. Loveflutter, a British dating app, is working on a feature that will gauge compatibility based on chats and offer suggestions on when the first date should be.
"We will ping a message saying 'You are getting along really well, why don't you go on your first date'," said Loveflutter co-founder Daigo Smith.
Currently the app uses information from Foursquare to help users find hip, equidistant spot for a first date to take “the pressure off organizing that first date,” according to Smith.
"It will say things like 'based on her personality inclination, she is a traditional person, I would recommend dinner and a walk.'"
Voice activation is another area of interest. AIMM is a matchmaking dating app that is entirely voice operated and is in a test with about a thousand users.
"It will say things like 'based on her personality inclination she is a traditional person, I would recommend dinner and a walk'," said Kevin Teman, the app's developer. He expressed a desire for a national rollout by early next year.
If your heart is set on a celebrity crush, U.K.-based dating app Badoo is using AI and facial recognition technology to help you find a match that resembles a photo you upload, whether an ex or a star like Kim Kardashian, Emma Stone and Beyonce (the top searched celebrities for their Lookalikes feature).
Love, it seems, is only but an algorithm away.