The last phase of the configuration involved slipping left and right on the images of stocks of the faces of people until the application has supposedly, determined which profiles correspond to my real “#attractiondna”. Despite the choice of men and women of various racial horizons during the scan, most of the matches with whom Iris connected were women living in the Philippines. The CEO and founder of Iris, Igor Khalatian, explained by e-mail that this was probably due to the recently viral application with Philippin users. He added that the company is working on a better balance for these connections.
A person I connected, Chloé, was a user passionate about the application and thought that the vague AI aspect was cool and beneficial.
“Yeah, it’s useful,” she told me. “Because you can have good friends here.” Despite the use of the application in the past six months and benefits from the conversations, Chloé had not yet met his matches in person. (All user names in this story have been modified to preserve anonymity.)
Another of women, Althea, was new in the application, using it alongside other options such as Bumpy And Okcupid. Althea did not really care about the IA aspect of Iris. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I can find a serious relationship here maybe.”
While I was talking With more women on the application, it was quite clear that many users approached Althea’s point of view than that of Chloé. Connection with the right person via a connection or dating application looks like a game of figures to many people while juggling several accounts. In the end, everyone has the impression of being an algorithm chum before even entering AI tools. These users are ready to appear wherever it seems that other people who deserve to be found could drag.
Some of the users of Grindr that I contacted in San Francisco were also ambivalent as to the plans of the application for the features of the AI, and almost no one had heard of the Wingman chatbot, despite life in America. As long as this does not interfere too much with their main objectives on Grindr, this subset of users did not seem to worry about new tools anyway.
Another group of users has been disabled to find out more about the plans of more AI features. “I am philosophically very anti-ai,” Tomás told me. “Part of the relationship establishment – whether sexual, romantic, platonic – influence friction. I think the most organic approach is not to have an implicated AI. Although Tomás has recognized that AI features could be potentially useful for other users, he does not see the tools as aligning on his personal beliefs or his real reason to use the application: Sex.
I again sent a message to Sebastian to better understand his perspective, curious if he had other reflections on AI tools, dating applications and the connections he wanted to share. “Yes, guy. Many, “he wrote, before dropping four huge blue messages in our cat together. His answer listed four advantages (best games, improved security, conversation starters, profile optimization) and four against (lack of authenticity, confidentiality problems, algorithmic biases, excessively on AI), organized perfectly in lists and accompanied by emoji. It is immediately clear what Sebastian does, so I asked if this answer had been generated by AI. He answers quickly: “Yes. So, you understand me?
