Link: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/15/ai-dating-apps-personality-matchmaking

Dating apps exploit you, dating profiles lie to you, and sex is basically something old people used to do. You might as well consider it: can AI help you find love?

For a handful of tech entrepreneurs and a few brave Londoners, the answer is “maybe”.

No, this is not a story about humans falling in love with sexy computer voices – and strictly speaking, AI dating of some variety has been around for a while. Most big platforms have integrated machine learning and some AI features into their offerings over the past few years.

But dreams of a robot-powered future – or perhaps just general dating malaise and a mounting loneliness crisis – have fuelled a new crop of startups that aim to use the possibilities of the technology differently.

Jasmine, 28, was single for three years when she downloaded the AI-powered dating app Fate. With popular dating apps such as Hinge and Tinder, things were “repetitive”, she said: the same conversations over and over.

“I thought, why not sign up, try something different? It sounded quite cool using, you know, agentic AI, which is where the world is going now, isn’t it?”

Is there anything we can't outsource?

Machine that tells you to eat glue on pizza is gonna find someone for you.

Fate simply serves up only five matches at a time – no infinite swiping – and, excruciatingly, forces its users to write an explanation when they reject a potential match.

Why!?! This sounds more like a job interview.

I’ve been single for 3 years and haven’t had a date in 2 years. Not for a lack of trying but I’m in a fairly remote area, most singles nearby aren’t my type (putting it very politely) and last but not least; dating apps absolutely promote ’Tinder culture’.

Dating apps will recommend me supermodel gold diggers 120km’s away before someone close with something in common. And then the chances of matching are low to none.

At least this Fate app seems to be trying something different and (seemingly) positive. I’d give it a go, can’t be any worse than what I’m using already.