What if your next date wasn’t even human? With all this new technology with AI, where’s that heading in dating and with apps and how we meet people and even going forward into our relationships?
Welcome to my Broken to Brave podcast. I’m Donna Barnes, the love coach. Technology is always evolving. And so are relationships and dating, I mean, I can’t even tell you how many people have come to me for coaching post divorce and said to me, it’s different now, Cause they’ve been married for 20 or 30 years. It’s very different now because technology is constantly evolving. A lot of the apps now allow you to do a voice recording or even a video recording so that you feel like you get a sense of the person in a different way. But with AI that is now very real looking.
I’m sure you’ve seen on the news where, there’s an agent that made it actress who is completely AI generated and she’s stunning. there’s really not a lot to be able to tell that she’s not real. So back to the dating apps. What if somebody’s really good with AI? Because honestly, the really sad truth of it is, is people that are more socially awkward tend to be really good with computers, right? Because that’s a medium that there’s no stress about. It just seems to be the way it is, everybody jokes about like the kid that was the nerd in high school turned out to be Bill Gates, right?
Technology is something you can really get into and almost hide behind. If you’re not socially outgoing. Someone who’s very social and has a big social life isn’t as involved with their computer and isn’t the person that’s constantly on their phone, right? Even just like when you’re out somewhere and you see people, if you’re in a coffee shop or something and you’re waiting in line for something. How many people are really standing in line and maybe even talking to the person next to them or most people are on their phone.
AI is the next version of. I mean, I’m old enough. mean, geez, I used to do the shoe shows as a shoe model. And I remember this girl when I was like 40. And this beautiful young girl was like 22, very genuinely said to me one day, “wow, can you imagine a world without the internet or cell phones?”
I said, “yeah, I grew up in that world”. To that point, it was a much simpler time, right? Relationships were just exactly what they were. I mean, there was one phone, one phone line, and if my mother was on it, because she was a talker. She’d be on the phone, I’d be going, mom, get off the phone, right? None of my friends could call if someone was on the phone. But without getting off topic, where are we at today?
Not only does everybody have a phone, but there’s AI on every phone now. I mean, did your phone update recently and now you have a new AI companion depending on who your provider is? It’s like Gemini or you you’ve had Siri for a long time, depending on what phone you have. So be careful in dating that AI is not who you’re talking to because if someone’s really good with creating AI and let’s face it, I use AI for the descriptions on my videos, it’s very dependent on what you ask it. So if someone’s really good at knowing how to prompt the AI and teach it, How do you know who you’re talking to? How do you know whose pictures that is?
It used to be to identify scammers you could upload into Google their picture and find who they stole the picture from, they don’t even have to do that anymore now. They can just generate one with AI and put up a really attractive picture. They can even steal someone’s voice if they don’t like their voice, because voice I think has a lot to do with attraction. You might start communicating with somebody and decide to meet them in person, which by the way you should always do in public and let someone know where you’re going to meet them.
But they might not be anywhere close to who you thought they were. that’s a really scary thought. Additionally, even with communication, you can ask it how you should talk about things. You could ask it first date topics, right? I actually have a long time coaching client who came to me because she likes a guy, but he’s married and she’s interacting with him quite a bit with some work thing. And she asked AI, about a text message that she wanted to send to him and she asked it if it was suggestive. AI said, no, it wasn’t. So she sent it and then yeah, it caused problems. And she came to me for coaching to unpack it. I said to her, you know, AI doesn’t have feelings. It doesn’t have that human inflection.
So you have to be a little bit careful with it because yes, it can be fabulous. And yes, it’s very helpful in a lot of ways and jeez where we’re headed it’s just going to get better and better and better.
As far as coaching goes, I think people feel like they can talk to AI and get answers and advice, which may work, but…
I’ll tell you, I’ve played enough with AI to know that I need to ask it the same thing four different ways sometimes to have it really understand what it was that I was trying to get. And I think that’s very true, It has to learn what you’re thinking. And yeah, while it can be really fast at a lot of things, it doesn’t have the emotions and the empathy and compassion and remorse than a human being does. A person who’s not a sociopath, right?
But what does that mean for your relationships? How do you know that your partner isn’t studying AI before they go out with you? I mean maybe they’re spitting all sorts of questions into AI to know what to talk to you about. And then now you think you’ve met this person who’s well read or well you know whatever that maybe they just crammed for five minutes with an AI tool.
There’s a whole bunch of ways that it can cause people to be deceptive. Now on the flip side of that, if you are socially awkward, then yes, it could be helpful to you to give you more confidence to feel like you can go out on a first date. And look, I’ve given that advice for years, that if you have a hard time coming up with conversation before you go on a date, you should do a little bit of research about a few things that are going on in the world.
Interesting things to have it in your back pocket, so to speak, to talk about while you’re on a date. So you’re not sitting there looking at each other thinking, geez, what should I say? If you’ve thought about it beforehand. So, now that there’s AI, you can just ask AI, but it doesn’t mean that those things are appropriate, It depends on how you ask things in what you get back.
In trying to figure out what is right for you, that’s really something that’s left in person in really getting to know somebody interacting with them. Flirting is a big piece of connecting with somebody, which is about making eye contact and getting in their personal space, leaning in.
In matchmaking, could find two people who are perfect for each other on paper, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to like each other. A lot more goes into finding a good match with somebody than being a good match on paper. I know there’s some matchmaking companies that are using AI now to match your profiles, which, you know, is a great place to start from. not saying that. I think it could be really terrific, but I think you could also pass over somebody.
Because like I said, I’ve put two people together that I thought were gonna be crazy about each other and they didn’t like each other at all. And on the flip side of that, sometimes there was somebody that, in fact, there was one girl that, there was a guy that for whatever reason I had interviewed him and I just didn’t think that he was right for her for whatever reason, but he did check some of her boxes. So I was talking to her one day and I said, you know what, let me just throw this out to you. I wasn’t sure about this guy. And she said, “You know what? I’d like to meet him.” So, she went out with him and long story short, she ended up dating him and like last I knew they were together, it was a good year, right? She later said to me, what was it about him that you didn’t, and honestly, I don’t even remember. It was just an instinct that I had that, yeah, I don’t know. I wasn’t sure that they were a good match, right? So my point is there’s no rhyme or reason to why we’re attracted to who we’re attracted to.
Or even who could be a good match for us. just curious with the whole AI thing, because I mean, now they’re creating songs. there’s a country song that I just saw on the news this morning that is the number one on the country charts that is completely AI generated. And it’s a really handsome guy, cowboy looking guy, right? That is completely AI generated. It is not real at all. honestly, I mean, I’m a musician, I play piano, I want to hear someone’s music that they’ve thought of, that they’ve created, not what a computer has put together. There’s a big difference, And like I said, they’ve done it with actors too.
So just something to consider that, when I was growing up, they had commercials that said, is it real or is it Memorex, right? For tape recorders. So, Yeah, is it real or is it AI? I think is definitely something to be cautious of. And especially if you’re on the apps and look, the apps can work. Look, I’ve met some of the greatest loves of my life online. So, I’m not saying that that can’t work, but I think you have to have your guard up a lot higher today to see that someone is actually who they are portraying themselves to be, and not just really good at using AI.
So leave me your comments. What do you think? Where do you think AI is headed? Do you think it’s gonna be helpful? Do you think it’s gonna be hurtful? Can it help your relationships?
I thought it was worth talking about. I’m here for coaching if you need an actual human being to talk to and listen to you and give you insight. And thanks for watching. I’ll see you in my next episode.
