Singles on Tinder, Hinge and Bumble are feeding their chats into ChatGPT and Claude to write replies, a habit now called “chatfishing”, and their matches are starting to notice.
The term is a twist on catfishing. The photos and name are real. It is the wit, warmth and apparent emotional intelligence that may have been outsourced.
Scientific American described how users paste a match’s messages into a chatbot, or upload screenshots, and ask what to say next. Bloomberg reported in July that the result can be a connection built on the model’s charm rather than the person’s.
Who is doing it
Plenty of people, and the numbers are climbing. A 2025 study by Match and the Kinsey Institute found that 26% of singles were using AI to improve their dating lives, up 333% in a year. Nearly half of Gen Z singles had tried it.
The 2026 edition suggests that was only the start. Dating News reported that 67% of Gen Z respondents and 39% of singles across all generations had used AI in their dating lives. The survey covered nearly 5,000 US singles.
An industry has grown up around the habit. Global Dating Insights reported that apps such as Rizz, Winggg and YourMove AI suggest replies to screenshots, and that Rizz had 1.5 million monthly active users in 2024. Bloomberg’s figures, as relayed by that site, put Google searches for chatfishing up 5,000%.
Burnout is the usual explanation. Writing something fresh and flirty to a stranger for the seventh time in a week is tiring. Some of those leaning on AI are also anxious about saying the wrong thing, according to a specialist quoted by Pride.
How daters are spotting it
The tells are often clumsy. Mamamia collected accounts of matches who sent paragraph-length messages with detailed questions that felt “a bit unnatural”, then turned out to be quiet in person. One writer suspected a match had pasted the first AI suggestion complete with its punctuation.
Some people give themselves away. Psychology Today noted a rise in prompt slips, where a user accidentally sends the instruction they meant for the chatbot, such as a request for a funny, heartfelt message.
Others fall back on advice. Pride’s expert suggests keeping a log of moments that feel off, rather than confronting the person. Vice noted that moving to a phone call or meeting sooner will reveal a lot, and that photo verification confirms a face, not who wrote the messages.
The suspicion is widespread. Norton research from 2025, cited by Global Dating Insights, found six in 10 online daters believed they had already met AI-written messages.
Photos are not safe either. Vice relayed a CNN report about Kylee Baxa, who met a man whose profile showed holiday pictures from Mykonos. He admitted the images were AI-made because he lacked good photos of himself. She left.
What it does to trust
The worry is less about a single polished opener and more about weeks of attachment to something that is not the person. Boston University’s Kathryn Coduto told CNN, as quoted by Vice, that she worries about people who bond with a great conversation “and then when they meet the person, it’s not who they thought it was”.
Not everyone sees it as deceit. Kinsey Institute researcher Dr Gesselman said in Match’s release that AI is not replacing intimacy but “giving singles an edge”. Match’s own findings show 44% of singles would like AI to help filter matches, and 40% want help writing profiles.
Apps are drawing lines in some places and not others. The Next Web reported that Match, Hinge and Bumble say they do not screen for AI-written messages. Global Dating Insights said platforms ban AI-manipulated photos but generally not AI text.
Match Group chief executive Spencer Rascoff told Bloomberg that AI use off the platform is hard to control. Hinge chief executive Jackie Jantos stressed the importance of human interaction while avoiding strict rules, the same report said.
For now, the only reliable test is the one daters have always used: whether the person who turns up sounds like the one who wrote.
Sources: VICE, Scientific American, Bloomberg, Global Dating Insights, Dating News, Psychology Today, Mamamia, The Next Web, Match Group, Pride
This story was compiled by the MDW Newsdesk with AI-assisted tools, using the reporting credited above.
