As Valentine’s Day approaches, a new survey reveals how artificial intelligence is shaking up the modern romance and many people are not even realising it.
Not only is AI changing how we work and communicate, but it’s also creeping into our love lives. A survey by World Network, taken by over 90,000 people, has uncovered a mix of curiosity, concern, and outright deception in the world of online dating.
Flirting with a chatbot might sound like a joke, but for more than 20% of respondents, it’s a reality. Whether for fun or because they genuinely didn’t know their digital sweetheart wasn’t human.
Meanwhile, 60% of respondents have either suspected or confirmed that a match was an AI-generated profile, raising doubts about just how many real people are swiping left and right.
Bots, scams, and the demand for human verification
It’s not just playful flirting. 21% of users reported encountering phishing attempts while looking for love, 10% have interacted with bots, and 15% have faced both scams and AI-driven deceptions. In a striking example, one French woman was conned out of €830,000 (equivalent to £700,000) by scammers posing as actor Brad Pitt.
As a result, trust in dating platforms is eroding: 66% of respondents believe apps aren’t doing enough to verify real users, and 90% want a robust human verification system to weed out the fakes.
With 61% worried about bots and fake profiles, the survey reveals a growing demand for authenticity in digital romance.
Tiago Sada, chief product officer at Tools for Humanity, a contributor to World, said: “It’s no secret that, for many singles, dating apps such as Bumble, Hinge and Tinder are the default place to look for love. Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to know whether your match is, indeed, a real human. With catfishing and unwanted bot interactions on dating apps gaining prevalence, we need tools that take away the guesswork, so people can keep matching, dating and finding love without worry or deception.”