A dating service is launching an “AI wing girl” to help men land matches on dating sites. Called Ari, the AI provides personalized real-time advice for men to help them navigate the “difficult world of dating,” a representative told me.
The problem with digital dating? It’s literally digital Darwinism in action.
Just 10% of the men get 90% of the matches, says VIDA, the company behind the Ari AI dating app. It gets worse: the bottom 50% of men receive just 1% of matches, which is why, the company says, 63% of men under 30 are single and one in three young men report zero intimacy in the past few years.
“Men who are overwhelmed by isolation and lack meaningful connections are facing increasing levels of depression and anxiety every day,” Scott Valdez, co-founder and CEO of Ari and VIDA, said in a statement. “Ari is here to help level the playing field.”
Ari will help you build your bio, write better opening messages to potential dates, and give you real-time “expert dating advice” for “any dating scenario, the company says.
According to the company, men using the app report a 300% increase in dates within the first month of trying Ari. The AI powering the app builds on “millions of messages” from tens of thousands of dates, the company says.
When I downloaded the app and tried it, Ari gave me three suggestions in response to a fictional date’s message: “Why should I go out with you?”
- Why rush to conclusions when finding out could be so much more fun?
- That’s a pretty big question for someone I haven’t even had coffee with yet
- I don’t do auditions. Let’s just see if we click 😉
Overall: not bad, especially considering I didn’t actually give Ari any context, or screenshots of the chat, or any details about my fictional date. Like most AI-generated responses, even if they don’t exactly work verbatim, they can be good starting points.
Also, Ari gave good insight on a response to a fictional query about where we were going to go on the date. Rather than just spout a couple obvious options like a restaurant, movie theater, bar, or coffee shop, Ari suggested that I ask my potential date what kinds of places she would actually enjoy going on a first date.
Smart: that continues the conversation, signals that I care about my date’s feelings and desires, and allows me to choose from some of the places she mentions.
Ari says she’ll give me a “magnetic profile” in minutes just by asking me 9 questions,
All this insight doesn’t come cheap: Ari starts out at $25/month in Canada, where I live, or $20/month in the U.S. But she is available to answer any dating questions I might have, like what I should wear on a first date.
(Little hint: no sweatpants.)
“Importantly, Ari doesn’t take away the real human element – she empowers it,” says Valdez. “The real problem isn’t too much AI in dating – it’s that we don’t have enough. Our goal is to empower people to form genuine connections.”
Ari isn’t only available as a copilot for dating apps, apparently. You can also use her insights and messages when sliding into DMs or, the company says, when navigating real-world encounters … which might be a little awkward if you have to furiously type on your phone’s keyboard every time a cute potential date says something.
The app is available now for both iPhone and Android.
