AI matchmaker sets up blind dates — and real couples are following

AI is rapidly reshaping the online dating market, with chatbots now analyzing compatibility and selecting potential partners — and in some cases, actual couples are emerging from the matches.

According to the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, the online dating market is changing fast as AI matchmaking services, including "Amata," multiply.

Jaskia Villatoro, 33, who lives in the United States, spent several weeks chatting with Amata's AI chatbot, sharing details about her lifestyle, values, upbringing and views on relationships. The chatbot used that information to recommend men it deemed most compatible.

One of those recommendations led her to Sebastian Mitchell, 36, whom she met last November. The chatbot described him as someone with a diverse international background — born in Germany and raised in Australia, Spain and Scotland. Villatoro had also grown up moving between countries. Both were looking for a serious relationship and neither wanted children.

Villatoro paid $20 for the blind date and showed up at the time and place the chatbot specified. "Even though it was our first meeting, he didn't feel like a stranger," she recalled. The two have been together ever since.

Some startups are going further: they let users' AI personas converse with each other before the people themselves meet, using those exchanges to assess compatibility. Established dating platforms such as Bumble and Grindr are also moving quickly to incorporate AI matching features.

The industry argues that layering data on top of what has traditionally been gut-feel matchmaking can produce more efficient connections. The strategy is to offer a new alternative to users worn out by swiping through thousands of profiles.

Justin McLeod, who left his previous company last year, raised $18 million to found the dating app Hinge. "I built Hinge with the best technology available at the time, but I'm convinced there's a better way to date than having people endlessly swipe through thousands of profiles," he said.

AI matchmaking is not without its flaws, however. Some users have complained that the AI oversells potential partners or ultimately just mirrors back the preferences they themselves entered. Others have noted that the system describes multiple people in nearly identical terms, and that thin user bases limit the available options.

There is also the problem of users struggling to accurately describe what they want in a partner. Celeste Amadon, founder of the AI dating app Known, said the technology "has no choice but to rely on how people present themselves in an interview," adding that her team is "continuously improving its ability to distinguish between how someone describes themselves and who they actually are."

As AI dating services grow quickly, established apps are rushing to follow suit. Tinder and Hinge said they plan to use generative AI not as a tool to pick partners outright, but as a "date coach" that helps users write their profiles and break the ice.

Bumble is also piloting an AI assistant called "Bee," though the company said it has no immediate plans to abandon its swipe-based format or subscription model. CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said AI "will be a tool that reduces unnecessary friction in dating, not one that removes the human element from it."