By 2023, romantic chatbots had gained massive popularity, with Replika alone boasting 676,000 daily active users. On average, each user spent two hours a day engaging with the AI companion, according to Apptopia.
But it's not just Replika users—the trend of romanticizing AI chatbots is becoming a global phenomenon.
A survey by Sam Altman’s World (formerly Worldcoin) found that 1 in 4 people admitted to flirting with a chatbot, either knowingly or unknowingly.
The survey, conducted among 90,000 users from World’s 25-million-strong network, explored people’s attitudes toward love and AI.
Despite the growing popularity of AI chatbots, most people remain cautious about interacting with bots in dating apps:
To address concerns over fake profiles and AI-generated deepfakes, World launched World ID Deep Face—a tool that verifies real users on Google Meet, Zoom, and dating apps.
The system builds on World’s existing biometric verification technology, which scans human irises using a melon-sized orb. It aims to ensure that users are interacting with real humans in real-time video and chat conversations.
Tiago Sada, Chief Product Officer of Tools for Humanity (the company behind World’s technology), shared his own experiences of encountering AI-generated profiles on dating apps:
"All the time I get catfished. You see profiles that are just too good to be true. Or you realize this person has six fingers. Why do they have six fingers? Turns out it’s AI."
As AI continues to blur the lines between human and machine interactions, the need for better verification tools in online dating is more pressing than ever.
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