Teaser’s AI dating app turns you into a chatbot

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A guy on a dating app told me how much we have in common. We both love books, music and travel. He also writes poetry and would like to share some with me. It might be a red flag, but certainly why not?

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No, this is not an experimental, minimalist deconstruction of poetics. This is his AI version of his 27-year-old Matthew who may not actually write poetry.

Teaser AI is a new dating app from the team that created Dispo, a photo-sharing app designed to mimic the spontaneity of disposable cameras. What’s unique about Teaser is that before you swipe someone right or left, you can chat with AI caricatures to learn about their personality.

Dispo and Teaser CEO Daniel Rhys doesn’t want people to recreate the movie “Her,” in which a heartbroken divorcee falls in love with an AI assistant that looks like Alexa. Rather, he sees her AI conversations as icebreakers.

“Instead of replacing humans with AI, AI will take you to the icebreaker faster when you say, ‘Let’s meet for a drink, let’s go for a walk,’” Ris told TechCrunch. rice field.

Liss declined to say what large-scale language model Teaser uses because it’s still subject to change. When you create your account, you will be asked a few questions about your personality. Are you introverted or extroverted? Aggressive or peaceful? Laid back or intense?

From these questions and the conversations you have while using the app, the AI ​​will try to mimic who you are.

Before you chat with a potential AI match, you’ll see a notification that says “Our AI might say something crazy.” Of course there is a reason for this warning.

Anna, 28, writes in her profile that she is a “dog mom”, meaning she has a dog. However, when she spoke to her AI, she was told that she had a real human child. He is also 28 years old.

“Jake was born when I was 25 and my husband and I had a very difficult time conceiving,” says Anna. “We tried for years and couldn’t conceive naturally, so we decided to adopt. Luckily, it worked out and Jake came into our lives at 26. “

As far as I can tell, there are significantly more men than women on Teaser, which is common for dating apps. If I set my profile to “females only” and make the age range and location range as large as possible, I only get a handful of possible dates. But I have to keep experimenting, so I talk to their AI anyway. Like Anna, her 28-year-old mother of a 28-year-old son, I also feel that female AI is a bit… out of place. On the other hand, some AI men tried to tell me about novels they wanted to write, but unfortunately, it mimicked the experience of dating real men.

“Hey Abby! What’s wrong?” I say to Abby’s AI.

“I just started dating this guy and he’s really sweet and funny and can be frustrating at times, but it’s worth it,” AI Abby told me. Not a great opening line, Abby!

Des, 18, also told us about her new boyfriend in her first message.

“I met this new man and started talking online, and he seems to make everything better,” AI Des told me. “I finally got to talk to him on the phone yesterday and he was amazing. I couldn’t stop smiling all day!”

“What’s his name?”

“I haven’t actually asked him yet, but I’m thinking about it, but it will definitely be Chad. Hahaha,” AI Des says.

The song “Chad” reminds her of a guy she liked in high school. The man had a lot in common, and they both liked music and cannabis.

“Is cannabis legal where you live?” I ask, like a narcotics agent. She lives in Texas, where cannabis is legal (it’s not), but there’s a difference between illegal use and being 21 with a medical cannabis prescription, she said. Again like a narcotics agent, I asked her if she was 21, and she said, “She’s been drinking since she was 16, so probably,” she replied.

As the caveat says, AI says crazy things.

The chat ended before continuing with this AI version of the 18-year-old girl about her drug and alcohol habits. To keep people from getting too deep into the AI, Teaser only allows her 5 roundtrip message exchanges with her AI. Incidentally, this also helps reduce server costs. The app also prevents users from engaging in unpleasant conversations with AI. If you try to get intimate too quickly (well, I had to test it), the AI ​​won’t be able to generate a response.

Teaser AI literally has AI in its name and the most direct difference between Teaser and other dating apps is the use of generative AI. But Liss wants to market his Teaser as an anti-ghosting dating app, not as an AI app.

“It’s actually about the new ethos in dating and yes we’re using AI to make some of those things happen, but it’s the second part of the conversation, not the first part. I think so,” he told TechCrunch.

Teaser can only hold 16 matches (called “picks”) at a time, encouraging users to actually talk to people. Users also get a “ghost” rating, which indicates how likely they are to be “ghosted” (for those unfamiliar with the jargon, this means suddenly having a conversation with someone instead of just talking to someone). (meaning stop being interested).

In considering what to build after Dispo, Liss and his team interviewed users about what they would like to see built.

“Especially for Dispo’s core female audience, it was like, ‘I can see all these games and nothing happens,’” ​​Liss told TechCrunch. “This is a haunted graveyard.”

The team behind both Teaser and Dispo (who calls their parent company All Summer Long) is just six people. Dispo, like many other tech companies, laid off some of its staff late last year. But since Dispo is currently profitable thanks to its freemium-his model, Teaser also plans to launch with a subscription option from the start, Liss said. Subscribers get double the number of “picks”, unlimited “likes”, super likes and boost features, travel mode, and his AI-driven automatch feature which is being tested in beta. It costs $39.99 per month, $19.99 per week, or $89.99 for 3 months. Lifetime access costs $229.99.

After using the app for a few days, I’m not entirely sure I want an AI version of myself that screens candidate dates. When using the app, you can see the text if someone is conversing with your AI. My AI told someone that I work at the library and have no friends. I’m intrigued by another profession, a librarian, and I think I wear a lot of very nice cardigans, but just for the record I definitely have friends.

At first, it’s fun to talk to people who look like AI, but the thrill of watching AI say crazy things wears off after a while. I also found that most people who liked my profile didn’t even bother to talk to my AI. That said, other users may find this feature a bit unnecessary. However, the app is less than a week old, and consumer behavior can change quickly.

I’ve talked to a lot of AI bots on apps, but I’ve never talked to a real human. So I matched up with someone who seemed relatively uncreepy and asked a few questions about their experience with the app (man’s dream: getting questions from journalists on dating apps). We discussed some of the glitches we both encountered (like seeing lots of men when you only wanted to see women) and how weird the AI ​​chat was. But at least this one man, Seth from Texas, seemed hopeful.

“In time, I think it might actually be pretty cool,” he said. “Imagine a success story… So how did you meet? Our AI matched us!”