According to one study, up to 17% of people who want to get married today have met online. (Photo: 123RF)
GUEST EXPERT. What could be better than a light or no light theme to end this summer, which was clearly disappointing weather-wise and probably very conducive to the breakup of many couples lacking vitamin D and heat?
You won’t be surprised if I tell you that finding your loved one in 2023 has absolutely nothing to do with what it was even 10 years ago… In fact, the first online dating site has been around for a long time before: she In 1995, “Match.com” went online! It was the beginning of an industry that today is no longer a shadow of what it was back then. In his early twenties, sites like “Réseau Contact” appeared. The change was already drastic. The concept of seduction lost a little of its spice or at least its charm. In 2012, the introduction of Tinder caused a stir. This year my first baby boy was born, so I didn’t experience those Tinder days. However, it seems that meeting someone has now become almost as easy as ordering a pizza…
All the platforms that followed the launch of Tinder followed this race, which became a race for “fast food,” abandoning the primary goal of meeting the right person. Then new technologies gradually appeared in these applications.
However, did you know that according to a study by the Statistic Brain Research Institute, as many as 17% of people getting married today met online? So it seems to work for a lot of people! It is also estimated that since dating sites were founded, nearly 49 million people have created an online profile to find their significant other. Imagine how many “dates” have resulted from this and, above all, what immense potential this market has in the eyes of investors.
From “deepfake” to algorithms that identify the “perfect partner” for you to robots that message on your behalf to find your soulmate, he clearly has serious questions to ask himself, like: how we look for a life partner and beyond everything to find out who the person behind this exchange 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’re not far away from that…
For example, a recent study showed that 20% of men used ChatGPT not only to write personalized messages to their admirers, but also to create their profile. Obviously, I don’t think anyone wants to know that it was an AI trying to charm you and not the person themselves. But this trend is far from reversing, considering that the same study found that 37% of respondents felt safer around the opposite sex when using this tool.
If it’s ChatGPT writing social media exchanges for you to charm the other person, do you think you’re really speaking from the heart? The use of conversation robots is already widespread in this type of exchange. It goes without saying that I’m always easily surprised by new advances in technology, but when it comes to dehumanizing something so deeply human, I think it’s important to pause and consider the real impact of the technologies available to think about on these dating sites.
I just talked to you about technologies that already exist and are now widely used in the dating space. But what awaits us in the future?
First, consider that with technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality, encounters between two people in a parallel universe happen much faster than we think. Soon you’ll 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 aimed at suggesting dates to their customers. Companies are even considering incorporating genetic profiles and even DNA into dating profiles, as these two factors have been scientifically proven to play a role in attraction between individuals.
In a few years you will definitely no longer have to “swipe” left or right because the application will do it for you. The AI knows what common interests you share, and who knows, might even offer you tickets to shows between your house and your own house. Ultimately, we can seriously question whether artificial intelligence will really be able to decipher one of the most complex human emotions, love.
I still dare to hope that human nature will resist falling into a seemingly simple gain in time, which in reality will lead to a potential loss of knowledge about who we really are and, above all, what we really need to be around to be happy with another person!