What I learnt from watching the Ashley Madison doco with my husband

I’m watching the new Ashley Madison documentary on Netflix with my husband (who was not on the list). We hadn’t yet met when the infamous list of aspiring adulterers was released in 2015, but I remember feeling the weird guilt you feel when a police car is driving behind you, even though you’ve done nothing wrong. Did I sign up to an adultery website and forget about it?

No, I didn’t. And as the documentary uncovered, neither did many other women. The “service” was full of fake female profiles with chatbots trained to bleat sexy talk with winking emojis because there weren’t enough women signing up. Men, take note: real women with busy lives don’t want to “talk sexy” unless they’ve just been watching Outlander.

Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal is a Netflix documentary series that revisits the 2015 data hack of the cheating site.Credit: MARK BLINCH

It was a sign of things to come. According to the founder of the dating app Bumble, Whitney Wolfe Herd, single people looking for lurve won’t have to bother with tedious dates any more. They will have an artificial intelligence “concierge” (chatbot) scanning potential matches, doing all the awkward small talk with other people’s AI concierges, narrowing it down to “three people you really outta [sic] meet”.

This should bring to mind the words “dystopian hellscape” rather than “exciting new business plan” and “love is in the air”.

It could be great in theory: your AI bot, who knows you intimately after watching your Google activity for five minutes, acts as a proxy, chatting away with other proxies to accelerate the dating process. My dating era (not error!) would have been improved if Siri and her mates were around to algorithmically locate that human rights lawyer who was a part-time bassist and Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ doppelganger. No more guys in finance trying to persuade me that they’re “actually really fun” – with “fun” being code for drugs and electronica. Not to mention the dick pics. Siri could have been an excellent bypass for unsolicited anatomical still life.

Software developer Aleksandr Zhadan used ChatGPT to scan 5239 matches on Tinder, and initiate conversations and schedule dates, which eventually found him a woman who is now his fiancee. He even trained it on photos of his past matches, women he found attractive, to home in on his preferred “look”. You read that and buy into the happy ending, until you learn that his fiancee, Karina, had to overcome the fact she was speaking to ChatGPT for the first few months of their relationship.

Dating is surely something that should remain solidly human. You know how it will end: your AI concierge will start telling you that your chances for love will increase if you buy this brand of whitening toothpaste – oh, and here’s a link! Or, for an extra $50 a month, you can access higher-tiered genetic specimens! It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the introduction of new technology will shortly be followed by spammy advertising and pay structures.

And when will it stop? We already have people marrying their chatbots. We’ve got the wrong idea. Dating isn’t a matter of finding the “correct” person; it’s a process of self-discovery, like the time your crackling chemistry with an itinerant man living with his parents and pursuing a career in feng shui consultation said more about your unresolved desire to rescue hopeless men than it did about his potential soulmate status.

I didn’t know what I wanted in a partner and had to meet a bunch of people to figure out what was important to me. I agree with writer Rob Henderson, who on Substack said: “While AI and technology can streamline the process of dating, they cannot replicate the deep emotional, psychological, and physical cues that come from direct human interaction.”

Dating is a process that cannot be circumvented. It prepares you for the complexities of a long-term monogamous relationship, which the interviewees in the Ashley Madison documentary discuss. It’s far easier to drift off into fantasy land where you can chat with “sexy Siri”, or better yet, have your AI bot chat away with other AI bots so you can do the important work of a good Netflix binge. Plus, we need to go on bad dates to have something to giggle about with our girlfriends. This is real life: unquantifiable but good, with all the glitches.

Cherie Gilmour is a freelance writer.

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