It Was a Record Year for Dating Apps. They still don’t get it

To remedy this, several startups have launched niche dating apps—some confusing, others downright predictable—designed to meet unique needs, and many built on the promise of artificial intelligence. VolarCreated by a former director of product at Snap, it uses a chatbot to message back and forth with potential acquaintances on your behalf. There is also one Rizz, Irisand you liveall of which use AI to find your soulmate by helping users navigate first impressions and awkward conversations. For singles interested in other, let’s say, avant-garde forms of companionship, there are apps like this that take people out of the equation entirely. EVA TO YOU and LunaActing as your AI girlfriend.

It’s too early to tell how effective any of these AI-powered apps are at reducing the likelihood of people becoming ghosts, but recently report Hopelab found that 40 percent of young people use chatbots to have ongoing conversations. The future of dating promises to be chattier and weirder than ever, according to a report.

Still, swipe exhaustion remains a major concern among singles in every demographic. App fatigue is contagious in dating savages. No one knows this better than JB power dating I spoke from New York in September. At the time, she had been on 200 dates since her breakup — most stemming from Hinge and Raya — and expressed feelings of exhaustion, even though she couldn’t quite shake herself off the addictive thrill of app dating.

I heard from JB in December. He reached out to let me know that he had somehow forgotten to share the “most unusual” dating story from our initial conversation. “I can’t believe I just thought of this,” she wrote in a text message. “On our third date, a girl says, ‘If you fuck me really well tonight, I’ll cancel my other dates this week.'”

Did he? I retreated.

“I was upset. “I almost finished the meeting,” he said. “He was winning until he hit me with that poisonous thing.”

JB told me he’s still running out of apps, but still using them a lot. The week we spoke, she was fresh out of another breakup. A recent meeting in Philadelphia, he said, was scuttled after a woman lied about talking to other people. He made the first move on Raya and later they DM’d more bond trades on Instagram. He had followed her, which was a rare and refreshing change of pace. “I was smitten,” he says. When the relationship ended, it made it even more difficult. “Did he seek me out just to lie?”

JB is currently on a rebound, or what he describes to me as a period of “side quests”—hunting the neighbor’s cat, surfing TikTok, trying new restaurants. “I was bad, but we bounced back,” he said. She wonders if dating apps will ever be the solution for singles like her. “It’s really rotten here.”