It Was a Record Year for Dating Apps. They Still Don’t Have It Figured Out

To fix this, several startups have launched niche dating apps—some surprising, others completely predictable—designed to meet unique needs, many of which are built on the promise of AI. to forgetCreated by a former product director at Snap, uses a chatbot to repeatedly message potential daters on your behalf. There is also the ridge, IrisAnd you liveAll of which help AI find your soulmate by helping users with first impressions and maneuvering through awkward conversations. For singles interested in other, let’s say, avant-garde forms of companionship that completely remove people from the equation, there are apps like Eva Yu And LunaWho act as your AI girlfriend.

It’s too soon to tell how effective any of these AI-powered apps are at reducing people’s chances of being ghosted, but the latest one is Report Hopelab found that 40 percent of youth rely on chatbots for ongoing conversations. The future of dating, the report concludes, promises to be trickier, and stranger, than ever.

Still, right-swiping fatigue is a major concern among individuals in every demographic. In the dating wild, app fatigue is contagious. No one knows that better than JB, Power dating From New York I spoke in September. At the time, she was on 200 dates after a breakup — mostly from Hinge and Raya — and expressed feelings of resentment, even as she couldn’t quite tear herself away from 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 untrue” dating story from our initial series of conversations. “I can’t believe I just thought about this,” she wrote via text message. “On our third date a girl says, ‘If you treat me so well tonight, I’ll cancel my other dates this week.'”

What did he do? I shot back.

“I was angry. I almost finished the date,” he said. “He was winning until he hit me with toxic shit.”

JB told me he is still tired of apps but there are still too many of them. As of the week we speak, she’s pulled off another breakup. A recent courtship in Philadelphia, he said, was uncomfortable after the woman lied about talking to other people. He made the first move on Raya and they later established another bond trading DMs on Instagram. He followed her, which was rare and a refreshing change of pace. “I was hurt,” she says. That made it even harder when the relationship ended. “He found me, only to lie about it?”

JB is currently in a rebound, or what he describes to me, period of “side quests”—pet-sitting his neighbor’s cat, surfing TikTok, trying new restaurants. “I was bad but we’re back up,” he told me. She wonders if dating apps will ever be a solution for singles like her. “It’s really rotten here.”