AI ethics more or less epitomize the idea of a moral gray area. This is perhaps most apparent in the arrival of a new AI-powered dating app assistant that promises a 100 percent response rate.
Millie, “your AI dating assistant”, is exactly what it sounds like. Like any virtual assistant (Siri, Google, whichever Halo character Windows is doing these days), Millie essentially exists to deliver answers upon your request; however, she is also designed to offer AI-generated responses to prompts that are specifically associated with dating apps.
According to the creator website, Millie has a few general functions that can be used to get a massive increase in responses (though, notably, no one ever said all of the responses would be good).
Primarily, Millie can be used as a “coach” to give you advice about your profile and habits. Millie can also generate pick-up lines based on others’ profiles, theoretically allowing you to “break the ice like an artist” and get the conversation going.
Should a conversation end up drying up or becoming stale at some point, Millie can analyze and come up with a prompt to get things back on track.
If that’s all Millie did, one could probably consider the app relatively harmless; after all, everyone has googled a way to talk to new people at some point.
However, Millie also has the capacity to write a customized poem for you, recommend creative and unique (go you!) date concepts, and finish your sentences for you, and features such as photo analysis and bio-writing are forthcoming.
Some comments on Product Hunt question the moral implications of these features, with others wondering about gender bias in the AI database.
Look, dating apps are already virtual cesspools of trickery and posturing. If you were to ask 100 people how they would feel if they knew that their first date with someone had been manipulated and set up by AI, I legitimately don’t know what kinds of answers you would get.
All I can say is that AI assistants are becoming (and will continue to become) more and more commonplace in a variety of arenas, so this development isn’t particularly surprising.
Millie is available to try for free now, with several of the above features becoming available soon.
Read also: AI’s impact on non-consensual socialization
Jack Lloyd has a BA in Creative Writing from Forest Grove's Pacific University; he spends his writing days using his degree to pursue semicolons, freelance writing and editing, oxford commas, and enough coffee to kill a bear. His infatuation with rain is matched only by his dry sense of humor.
