39% of Singles Use AI to Date. What Gets Lost?

According to the Kinsey Institute's 2026 Singles in America survey, 39% of single Americans now use AI in dating. Among Gen Z it's 67%. Men use it more than women: 47% against 30%.

That can mean anything from fixing a profile photo to having a chatbot write the first message. I don't think it's sinister. I do think it's worth asking what it replaces.

The first message used to tell you something

One of the best beginnings I found while writing Become My Papi started with an argument. At a dinner, a man overheard a woman say she disliked a city everyone else loved. He asked why. They argued for twenty minutes. "You're wrong, but you're interesting," he said. At 12:14 he texted that he still thought she was wrong. At 12:16: Tomorrow?

Nothing about that was polished. That's why it worked. You could see how he argued, how he disagreed without sulking, how fast he wanted to see her again. A message written by a machine is smoother and tells you less.

Information isn't experience

Years later, the same man told me something I underlined. Their early weeks had felt incredibly efficient, he said, as if they were skipping all the nonsense. "We were skipping time." They had exchanged enormous amounts of information and mistaken it for experience. That story is in The Beginning Can Lie.

AI makes that easier. It can help you say the right thing, faster. It can't show you how someone behaves when tired, jealous or told no. Only time does that.

The survey's other finding

Nearly half of singles, 49%, said they had fallen for someone they weren't attracted to at first. Dr Justin Garcia of the Kinsey Institute said conversation, shared interests and values can change how people see someone. That kind of change happens in real, slightly clumsy conversation. It's hard to fall for someone's prompt.

If you use AI to date

• Use it for logistics if you like. Write the first real thing yourself.
• Notice if you're editing out the parts of you that are awkward but true.
• Meet sooner. A message can be perfect. A person can't, and shouldn't be.
• Ask yourself whether you know them, or only know what they've told you.

More on early signals in What the Wallet Actually Signals, and on how young men are struggling to date at all in The Dating Recession.

Source: Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and Match, Singles in America 2026, about 5,000 US single adults, released 14 September 2026.

Questions people ask

How many people use AI for dating?

In the 2026 Singles in America survey, 39% of US singles said they use AI in dating, including 67% of Gen Z, 47% of men and 30% of women.

Is using AI to write dating messages bad?

Not necessarily, but polished messages reveal less about a person. Only time and real conversation show how someone behaves when tired, jealous or told no.

Can attraction grow over time?

Yes. In the same survey, 49% of singles said they had fallen for someone they were not initially attracted to.