When Rebecca Koltun met a man in the VIP section of a Tampa club, she didn't ask her friends for advice. she asked ChatGPT.
Should she text him first?
“I was told no in a chat,” said Koltun, 26, from St. Petersburg, Fla., who works for a ballet nonprofit. “This guy seems to be in the VIP section. He's used to attention from girls. The best thing to do is to leave him alone and wait for him.”
A week later, the man texted Koltun. “The chat advice worked for me,” she told Business Insider.
Koltun is one of the millions of daters who are using AI as coaches, therapists, and friends. Dating app Swiper uses chatbots to refine your profile. DM slider uses AI to generate pick up lines. Anxious blind daters take advantage of this technology to ask if they should send a message the next morning.
Rebecca Koltun, 26, asked ChatGPT if she should wait until a man texts her. Rebecca Koltun
Finding space on your date's home screen is a growing, largely bootstrapped startup space. Apps such as Rizz and YourMove, once viral hits, now have established stable user bases and are highly profitable. Dating app heavyweights such as Match Group and Bumble are in talks with these apps. Each startup founder develops a unique and competitive product.
To what extent should we leave love to AI? There are a lot of daters on TikTok who are convinced that Hinge Match uses ChatGPT. There's a total “South Park” element to it, and there's even a new word: “chatfishing.” (Catfish uses fake photos and life stories, while Chatfish uses AI-altered voices.)
Founders and singles alike say enlisting the help of AI is the future of dating, whether they like it or not.
Welcome to the era of AI wingmen.
Goodbye, dating coach. Hello, AI.
Chase Dennis, an 18-year-old student from Wyoming, uses ChatGPT to slide into DMs. He says he asks the chatbot to tell him a joke or rhyme, but then edits the output to make sure it's his own words.
Do pickup lines work? “It's up to the girls,” Dennis said. “Most of them are. Sometimes they just think I'm cornball.”
Dennis said he often tells recipients that his pick-up lines are AI-generated, and most find them funny. “I was nervous to tell them because they might think I'm unoriginal, but to be honest, I think it's pretty iconic,” he said.
Chase Dennis, 18, uses ChatGPT to write witty pick-up lines. Chase Dennis
Daters like Dennis are courted by three groups of companies: startups, dating apps, and LLM manufacturers.
Leading the startup pack is Rizz, founded in 2022 by Roman Khaves. The app provides witty replies and compatibility scores based on dating app chat screenshots. Cabes branded it as an AI dating assistant when the field was still in its infancy. “There are hundreds of them now,” he said.
Rizz has been downloaded by 13 million people since its founding and has 400,000 monthly active users, Cabes said. He added that the app was profitable from the beginning, even before venture capital showed interest. Now, when venture capitalists come knocking on his door, Cabes said he turns them down.
Rizz promises to bring users “more dates” through AI suggestions. Screenshot via Rizz
Competing behind Rizz are companies like YourMove and Roast, founded in 2022 and 2024, respectively. YourMove has been downloaded “well over” 1 million times, according to founder Dmitri Mirakyan. (Mirakyan is no longer managing YourMove as he pursues another startup.) Roast has “millions” of free users and nearly 100,000 paid users, according to co-founder Benoit Baylin.
Then there are smaller apps that are growing their audiences. Wingman (4,700 paying customers), FireTexts (10,000 monthly installs), and one of the few VC-backed startups in the space, Amori (10,000 registered users).
These startups primarily focus on dating apps and DM slides, but they can also be used for flirty messages that extend far beyond a first date.
Who is using these apps? It's hard to say, but FireTexts founder Alex Vilenchik sees a difference in opinion.
“I don't know any female users other than my girlfriend,” he said.
Dating apps take off
As these helpers grow, major dating apps threaten to make them obsolete
Dating apps are increasingly incorporating AI advisors. Tinder has an AI photo selector. Hinge provides advice on opening lines. Grindr has been piloting its Wingman product, and chief product officer AJ Balance said the feedback has been positive.
Hinge includes AI-generated advice on creating starting lines. hinge
This space is ripe for acquisition, but none of the founders seem keen. Rizz's Khaves said Match Group's CTO approached him in 2023, but negotiations ended because Khaves was not interested in the acquisition.
YourMove's Mirakyan said he has been in talks with several major dating app companies. Roast's Bailin said he has spoken with Bumble and Match Group and is not impressed with Bumble's current efforts. Match Group declined to confirm past conversations about a potential acquisition. Bumble did not respond to requests for comment.
“If you look at Tinder's photo selection, you can see that they're really behind the times in terms of technology,” Bailin says. “If you take 20 selfies of yourself, those 20 will be suggested as photos.”
(I tested the photo selector myself; it doesn't select only selfies, but completely solo shots, breaking the classic dating app rules you want) at least some A group photo to prove that you have friends. )
Other founders seemed skeptical about a major dating app entering the space. Wingman founder Rob Mariani and FireText's Vilenchik both suggested that these companies are too politically correct to be useful.
“Can they make an AI say, 'Have you ever thought about losing weight?'” Mariani said. “That's a very rude thing to say. I don't know if they have the heart to do that.”
And then there are the AI pioneers themselves. Fundamental model creators and the chatbots they utilize pose a new threat to startups that are the driving force behind AI. ChatGPT can generate suggestions for dating app messages and provide feedback on your profile. According to CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI will soon allow erotica for adults, opening up even more opportunities.
Startup founders need to convince daters to seek out specialized products and even pay subscription fees, rather than relying on traditional chatbots or AI tools built into their go-to dating apps.
Am I being chat phished?
So, even more troubling questions remain. First of all, do single people want to implement AI into their dating lives?
The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, in partnership with Match Group, conducts an annual survey of 5,000 daters. This year, 26% of respondents said they use AI while dating. For active daters, this number jumped to 38%.
Amanda Gesselman, a researcher at the Kinsey Institute, said she's heard anecdotes that some daters felt like they were chatting with a bot. 33% of respondents said using AI to generate entire conversations would be a deal breaker. Daters are more receptive to AI-generated opening lines, she said.
The biggest issue was AI-altered photos, with 40% saying it was a deal breaker.
There is still some resistance to dating apps. Although Tinder is investing in an AI photo selector, it's still refraining from completely synthetic conversations. Claire Watanabe, Tinder's senior director of product, wrote in an email to Business Insider that Tinder “shouldn't feel like an ocean of chatbot-generated content.”
“Internally, we even joked about removing the paste feature and adding an em-dash detector to flag suspicious 'AI-ish' posts,” Watanabe wrote. “I'm half-serious, but my intentions are genuine.”
Daksha Franklin, 36, asked ChatGPT to describe the man of her dreams. LAURA_HUERTAS/Laura Huertas
Despite all efforts, it remains unclear whether AI wingmen are a fad or the future. Daksha Franklin, a 36-year-old clinical hypnotherapist in Los Angeles, asked ChatGPT to clean up her dating profile, but she wasn't happy with the results.
“I didn’t like it, so I said it myself,” she said.
However, Franklin is not an AI pessimist. She also asked ChatGPT to describe her dream man to narrow down her preferences.
Chatbots have successfully done this.
