Before You Use AI for Dating: 6 Risks You Need to Know
AI has entered one of the most human parts of our lives: dating and relationships.
I’m not here to write another article either berating or praising AI. In my line of work as a relationship and dating consultant, its growing influence is impossible to ignore. AI is here and almost certainly here to stay.
According to the recent Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report: Online Dating Edition, a growing number of UK online daters are turning to AI to enhance their profiles and interactions. Among those using dating apps:
56% would consider using AI to craft their profile
63% to write pick-up lines
49% to practise flirting
On the surface, this may sound efficient, even smart. However, before inviting AI into some of your most personal interactions, it’s worth understanding its current limitations and the potential price of that apparent efficiency.
There is a lot of speculation about whether this is helpful or harmful. Thankfully, relationship researchers are now actively testing what AI actually does to human connection.
Whether you use AI for companionship, dating advice or to communicate on your behalf, spend a few minutes exploring what the latest research reveals...
Can You and Should You Use AI for Dating?
Use it if you must but do it carefully and selectively - with your eyes open. Before making AI your default source of dating advice, emotional support or ready-made messages, consider these six risks identified by the latest research:
1. Is AI dating advice reliable?
Ask an AI platform a relationship or dating question and it can search, combine and summarise an enormous amount of available information. The problem is that widely repeated advice isn’t necessarily good advice. That’s the polite version. Let’s be honest: a great deal of dating and relationship advice online is utter rubbish. It includes multiple personal opinions, outdated theories, marketing claims and advice based purely on one person’s experience.
Even good research can become distorted in the process. A study comparing 4,900 AI-generated summaries with the original scientific papers found that leading AI models frequently made broader claims than the evidence supported. They were almost five times more likely than human writers to overgeneralise research findings and often draw wrong conclusions.
AI can therefore produce advice that sounds confident and authoritative, but not always based on proven relationship science. When the decision could affect your emotional wellbeing or the future of a relationship, a convincing answer isn’t enough.
In its current form, it's also likely to be generic, culturally skewed and not necessarily aligned with your values or circumstances. This applies to generic platforms and specialist dating advice AI, like Custom GPTs - who wrote them?
Also, are you aware of AI hallucinations? It's when it perceives patterns or objects that are nonexistent, and starts fabricating outputs!
2. Can AI companions reduce loneliness?
AI can only model and simulate emotions. While I value logic, science and clarity, I believe an intelligent approach to love requires more than just rational analysis. "Chemistry" and passion alone are not sufficient either because they are driven by hormones and are often unreliable guides. True human intelligence lies in our capacity to negotiate between emotional reactions and knowledge / reason. Both are necessary.
According to evolutionary psychologists, our emotions are not weaknesses to eliminate, but deeply evolved systems that carry important information:
The architecture of our mind, our evolved inner animal, is shaped by adaptations that have long served our species. *
Moreover, a July 2026 study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology asked the following question: can a highly supportive AI chatbot reduce loneliness as effectively as another human being?
The short answer is: NO. Participants spent two weeks talking either to a supportive AI chatbot trained in relationship science or to a random fellow student. The results demonstrate that in the moment, the chatbot worked and eased negative feelings. However, two weeks later, only the humans-talking-to-humans group felt significantly less lonely.
Strangers texting each other outperformed a specifically designed AI companion on the outcome that mattered. The key reason: in human relationships, people gradually disclose personal experiences to one another and create shared meaning. AI can respond with warmth but can't disclose anything personal or reciprocate vulnerability, so this relationship always remains constrained.
3. Does AI tell you what you want to hear?
AI only knows the version of you that you choose to share. It doesn't know your full history, emotional baggage or recurring relationship patterns (you may not even know them yourself). Nor can it hear the other person’s perspective, read your body language or detect the hesitation.
This incomplete picture becomes more concerning when combined with AI’s current tendency to align with the user. A 2026 study published in Nature tested five large language models. Models trained to respond more warmly produced substantially more errors and were around 40% more likely to affirm incorrect user beliefs. The effect was particularly pronounced when users expressed sadness.
Overall, the results indicate that sycophancy (fake, excessive flattery or praise) is a general behavior of state-of-the-art AI assistants, likely driven in part by human preference judgments favoring sycophantic responses.
Psychologists often highlight this concern: when individuals exhibit less healthy patterns, for example, anxiety or jealousy - validating or echoing those responses can be harmful. What’s needed is the opposite: for these patterns to be identified and constructively challenged.
4. Can you become too reliant on AI for dating?
Using AI occasionally to organise your thoughts is one thing, but over-reliance inevitably creates dependency. What happens when you don't have access: no signal, no Wi-Fi? If you depend on it, you'll be left without a reference point, which, inevitably, is going to affect your confidence.
Another study published in Telematics and Informatics in July 2026 describes this as the “Cyrano Effect” ** - when AI becomes a hidden romantic co-author, helping people create a more polished and confident version of themselves.
Some participants felt AI helped them express their true personality, particularly when they struggled with social anxiety, language or texting. However, reliance on that support created a new problem when conversations moved offline. Participants described increased anxiety about meeting in person without AI’s assistance. The persona-to-person leap could prove too wide, exposing a gap between the confident communicator on screen and the person who appeared on the date.
Every time you outsource a message, you also lose an opportunity to practise expressing yourself. Over time, this is likely to weaken rather than build your confidence.
The real question to ask yourself is why you feel you need AI either for prompts or for making decisions? Behaviour is ultimately a reflection of underlying mindset. If you’d like to understand what may be driving your dating choices and develop the confidence to start making them for yourself, book a free, confidential discovery call with me.
5. Should you use AI to write your dating profile and messages?
If you must use AI, use it selectively: for structure, some ideas, grammar check - but build up the rest yourself. Yes, you can train Claude or ChatGPT to apply a certain style to sound more like you, but authenticity has a detectable signature. If you recognise AI-generated language, so can others, which means eventually you'll be found out and exposed.
While some people don’t mind, many absolutely hate the idea of being “ChatGPT-ed” into bed. Once trust is compromised, especially in a new, still fragile relationship, it’s extremely hard (or impossible) to recover.
Another study published by Technology Org explored how AI shapes romantic interactions and where human communication continues to outperform it. The experiment involved 1,000 women and compared three personas: AI chatbot, a professional dating coach and an everyday young man.
The results revealed clear patterns: AI performed well at initiating conversations - it was polite, coherent and safe. However, emotional depth, vulnerability and commitment remained uniquely human strengths. When the interaction moved beyond messaging and into planning a real-world date, human communication took the lead.
Messages written by a professional dating coach ranked highest. By contrast, AI-generated responses were perceived as cautious and non-committal.
This highlights one of the main limitations of AI-generated conversations: difficulty confidently signalling intent, feelings and making decisions.
"The strongest differentiation appeared in the final stage: the “make it official” moment. Here, the young man’s message ranked highest, ahead of both the dating coach and the AI chatbot. Respondents described his message as genuine, emotional, and vulnerable - qualities that AI systems struggle to express due to their focus on coherence, safety, and risk-avoidance..." ***
Our relationships depend on authenticity and emotional presence - all the "messy human stuff" that can’t be simply engineered. Emotional honesty remains a human strength, so saying imperfect but genuine words beats a polished AI response every time.
6. Can AI reinforce bad relationship habits?
As a relationship and dating coach, I’m also concerned about the illusion of a relationship without consequences. With an AI companion, you can be rude, demanding or extremely selfish. It may push back gently, but it won't genuinely feel hurt, set a boundary or walk away.
Real life relationships don't work like that. They are based on reciprocity, compromise and the ability to recognise how our behaviour affects another person. We develop these skills partly through feedback, disagreement and repairing things when we get them wrong.
If you become accustomed to an endlessly patient companion designed around your needs, could this gradually create unrealistic expectations and bad habits that don't transfer well to human relationships? This may be particularly important for younger people who are still developing their social and relationship skills.
Watch my appearance on the GB News TV debate on AI in dating (timestamp: 1.25):
The Truth about AI Dating Apps
Some dating platforms represent a newer evolution in the online dating space, leveraging AI to enhance matchmaking beyond traditional algorithms, or so they say.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
Many traditional dating sites, like Match.com and eHarmony, have been using algorithms for decades. If you’ve tried them, you know that they require you to fill out long questionnaires about your personality traits and other aspects of yourself.
The quality of these methods is indisputable, as they were designed by some of the brightest scientific minds in the field. For example, Dr. Helen Fisher, a PhD and biological anthropologist, who served as Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute, conducted extensive research and authored six books on the evolution and future of human attraction, love, marriage, gender differences, how personality shapes who we are and who we love etc.
Did you know that Match.com first appointed Dr. Fisher as a Chief Science Advisor and started using Dr. Fisher’s algorithm to match people back in 2005? Many other dating apps have since adopted or developed this approach.
So, what do the newest AI dating apps do differently?
After researching this area, it appears that the latest platforms analyse:
User profiles: interests, hobbies, and personality traits inferred from bio text, photos, and activity.
Interaction patterns: who you swipe on, message frequency, response style, and conversation tone.
Psychological compatibility: some apps use AI-driven personality assessments to predict emotional and relational compatibility.
Much of this isn't entirely new, but rather a marketing twist: repackaging of older, research-backed approaches.
And here comes the biggest revelation: do you know the real formula of a healthy, long-term relationship based on research, not opinions?
Can AI Predict Long-Term Relationship Compatibility?
True compatibility is not based on shared hobbies or interests. Having some activities in common is great, but these alone predict almost nothing about long-term relationship success. In fact, maintaining some separate interests can actually help keep the spark alive over the years.
What really predicts long-term compatibility, based on decades of research - the most valuable dating tip you'll hear this year:
shared key life values (there are 6 specific areas)
trust between partners
ability to handle conflict constructively.
This is a deeper topic which I explore in detail with my clients through one-to-one relationship and dating coaching.
Remember, finding the right person and creating a happy relationship isn’t luck. It requires awareness, emotional presence and strategy. AI can assist, but it can't replace your emotional intelligence, judgement or intuition.
In a way, you already have the "built-in" tools required - you just need to learn to use your cognitive power better by educating yourself.
If you’d like tailored advice, a personalised strategy or emotional support, let's connect and discuss! Book a free confidential discovery call with me today or check out my step-by-step video framework for dating success.
With best wishes,
Mila Smith
Founder of From Single to Couple Relationship & Dating Consultancy
* Dr. Justin Garcia, The Intimate Animal
** In Edmond Rostand's (1897) play Cyrano de Bergerac, the brilliant but physically unattractive and insecure protagonist, Cyrano, lends his poetic genius to the handsome but inarticulate Christian to help him win the affection of Roxane.
*** Technology Org, Dec 2025
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