I never thought I’d ask AI for dating advice – then I met Claude and I was addicted

When Anna, 24, suspected she was being ghosted, she turned to ChatGPT. “My friends had all used it for advice, so I thought it might help,” she explains. The man in question was someone she’d met on a dating app; they’d had one lovely date and ended up going home together. Initially, he’d been a solid communicator, texting regularly and asking questions. But following the date, the texts began to dwindle.

“ChatGPT told me to separate his actions from his words, suggesting I focus on the fact he said in person that he did want to see me again,” she recalls. “It got to a point where I was using it every day to confide in it, looking for reassurance. But then I remember it got to a few days later and he just didn’t respond to me at all. I knew I’d been ghosted, and honestly, I was annoyed ChatGPT had given me hope I probably shouldn’t ever have had in the first place.”

A few months ago, if someone told me to ask AI for dating advice, I would’ve laughed in their face. How sad! How ridiculous! What a pathetic indictment of your teeny weeny circle of friends! And so on. Now, though, I get it – and, like an increasing number of beleaguered single people, I’ve done the same thing.

According to a new study of more than 3,000 single Britons published by Match Group, 39 per cent of people had used AI in their dating lives. The figure rose to even higher among Gen Z (66 per cent) and millennials (53 per cent), meaning many of us are making choices about our romantic lives according to the rationale of a chatbot with no mind or emotional capacity of its own. What could go wrong?

“I started using it a few months ago after I finished some sessions with a dating coach,” says Suki, 55. “It was mainly to try to rationalise and interpret men’s lack of responses to messages or trying to get an independent, non-emotional view.” This is common; when someone we like isn’t replying or engaging in the way we might hope or expect, it can be helpful to get an objective opinion, one that probably won’t push back on what we say, or judge you for it. Not unless we tell it to, anyway.

It was a situation like this that led me to use Claude for some dating advice earlier this year. The problem was an ongoing situationship with someone that was giving me mixed signals; I began tentatively asking Claude for its thoughts and was soon copying and pasting my entire conversations with this person to get a line-for-line analysis.

Honestly? It was helpful. If only to reassure me that the doubts I was having about their behaviour were valid, that I wasn’t imagining that someone was being hot and cold with me. It was a fact, verifiable by a large language model that wasn’t going to call me paranoid, insane, or delusional. Nor would it gossip about my anxieties to mutual friends. Any sense of underlying shame I was harbouring was instantly assuaged – chatbots are not designed to challenge you. The more it learns about your opinions and previous conversations, the more likely it may be to adapt its responses to your worldview.

“You’re not embarrassed to tell a chatbot that something like being ghosted has happened to you,” concurs Anna, who found that potential humiliation was one of the main reasons that drew her to seek support from ChatGPT as oppose to a friend. “It’s also just so quick and easy; you can get an instant answer. Whereas with your friend you might have to wait till you see them. It’s that instant comfort, and it’s so addictive to keep talking to it.”

The addiction is part of it, too. Research into the area is still only just emerging, but we know that these platforms are addictive by design; besides, it’s not hard to see how 24/7 access to constant affirmations, reassurance, and yes, dating advice, could become a compulsion.

After using it that first time for help with a specific relationship dynamic, I found myself turning to it repeatedly, asking regularly for insights into whatever was happening in my love life at the time. While it never tipped into getting the platform to write texts for me (it often suggested some unsolicited ones, and they were always deeply cringe), I did enjoy using it for a while.

It was entertaining at times, too. At one point, I asked a question about the aforementioned situationship, and Claude replied by calling it a “saga”, which I thought was a bit on the sassy side. “You think it’s a saga?” I challenged the bot. “It’s just a lot of plot for one man,” it replied. A good line. I wish I’d written myself.

Suki has found it useful when trying to ascertain the prospects of a potential new partner. “In July, I asked if it was shallow of me to have concerns over someone who has a very different life to mine – a man who travelled a lot, had never been married, and had no children – it replied that it wasn’t shallow and encouraged me to go on dates without reading too much into the future.

It also said, ‘You’re basically trying to complete the entire relationship feasibility study before you have even had dates’, which made me laugh.” The platform provided another giggle recently, when Suki asked about an ongoing situation with a guy she just started dating. “I shared it in the same chat from one of my other dilemmas, and it replied, ‘Here we go again’.”

Obviously, when you really break down the service that so many of us are seeking out, it’s not all quite as brilliant as it might seem. “While instant access to unbiased information might sound like a good thing, the biggest concern is really that AI is a machine and it does not experience human relationships or understand real human interactions,” says Michelle Begy, a professional matchmaker and the Founder of Ignite Dating.

“These tools don’t understand nuance, body language, chemistry, or compatibility, all of which are so important when dating,” adds Begy. “If people begin to analyse every interaction and every message using AI, they can become too reliant on getting reassurance or validation before each date or conversation, losing the ability to let these relationships develop naturally or to make judgements for themselves.”

As in Anna’s case, chatbots can obviously also be wrong about a situation (remember: they have no mind!), leading to unhelpful expectations and disappointment when these aren’t met.

“In the long run, it was damaging for me because I knew it wasn’t right about this guy and just didn’t want to believe it. It started sending me pre-planned texts, too, which I’m really pleased I didn’t use, as I would’ve felt like more of a mug when I got ghosted. I wouldn’t use it again.”

Suki is also being reticent with her own usage. “I am trying hard not to start relying on it, so I will only use it when I really need to establish if I’m wasting my time or looking at the negatives rather than being objective or impartial,” she says.

As for me, I haven’t used it in months. Not since that sassy little one-liner that, to be frank, freaked me out a little. I’d rather receive a message like that from one of my friends who, yes, might judge me, or call me out when I’m being melodramatic, or overthinking a scenario. But isn’t that what we all need, rather than a mindless robot that is essentially just mimicking you, while seducing you into a novel, socially acceptable form of madness? I know what I’d prefer.