00:02:44.680And it's also been interesting being here. I'm kind of treating this trip as a book launch celebration slash, I don't know, like commemoration of the fact that you and I just published a book together, an audio book together.
00:03:01.580yeah it's nice to have a little celebration from that and you know it was a lot of work
00:03:06.380to write and record and produce the audiobook but since then you Bridget have really been
00:03:12.600just like hitting the road doing publicity you know I think that's part of why we've been on
00:03:20.020this little hiatus you know I hope the listeners have been following along because even though we
00:03:25.480haven't been putting out additional Tangody episodes Bridget has been all over the digital
00:03:30.260airwaves, I guess, guesting on so many shows. And it's been a lot of work. And I really appreciate
00:03:36.500you doing all that. Yeah. Probably the biggest thing that came from the book launch and one of
00:03:43.200the bigger things of my career from being real is I was on Modern Love, the New York Times podcast,
00:03:48.100and there was a whole feature about it. That was surreal. I bet. Yeah. I was talking with a friend
00:03:55.520of mine the other day, my friend Colleen, and she is listening to the audiobook, said she really
00:03:59.300enjoyed it loves your voice we should say what the book is called i realize now i have not said
00:04:03.680the title of the book this is how good i am at promotion i have not said the title of the book
00:04:07.180that we're trying to get everybody to freaking read you know we're gonna get there uh it is love
00:04:11.740at first prompt ai in the future of intimacy you can get it wherever you get your audiobooks good
00:04:17.680flag to say that but she was telling her son about it who was like a teenager and he said wait wasn't
00:04:25.360she on modern love oh my god teens know about your work oh my god also shout out to colleen's
00:04:31.780kid that he is a teen who is it's like oh what are you into fortnite minecraft nah poignant
00:04:37.460intimacies speaking of kids this is such a non sequitur but so last night uh we were just like
00:04:44.460hanging out here at the resort um they had like a little happy hour thing but the interesting
00:04:50.880relevant thing is that there were these kids there and you know listeners know that Bridget
00:04:55.560loves kids and somehow you organized a like impromptu kids trivia no no no no so how it
00:05:06.100happened we recorded at the Bahamar podcast studio yesterday and it was a it was a marathon session
00:05:11.860we recorded for six hours again shout out to producer Brie for being down with us and rocking
00:05:16.120with us after you record for that long you're sort of in the weirdest headspace at our
00:05:20.260we immediately go to the happy hour which is lovely there is a single child sitting by himself
00:05:26.360who just starts talking to us he's very sweet and i don't know how it came up but we asked him a
00:05:33.240question and he didn't but i know i think that he said he was from new york state and we were like
00:05:39.160oh did you know the um motto of new york state and he was like no and i thought oh okay well let me
00:05:45.960and i don't know how it happened but i was like let me ask you some questions that you might know
00:05:50.160So I will admit that I asked ChatGPT to come up with questions that a 7th grader would know.
00:05:56.040It's like state capitals, math questions.
00:05:59.400Then it's a question about the game Fortnite.
00:06:18.980Before I know it, we've got like 10 fourth to seventh graders who are have all joined our table, right?
00:06:27.620Like their parents are all having a glass of wine and they're like, oh, this this like woman is just going to entertain our children for a little while.
00:06:35.500They were loving it. So next thing I know, I am essentially hosting Trivia Night.
00:06:40.380We've broken it down into sections. One kid is like, oh, can we do Minecraft trivia?
00:06:43.980One kid is like, oh, can we do five nights at Freddy's trivia? Real specific.
00:06:48.480fans he was calling it fans that was the most interesting thing he had an acronym yeah all the
00:06:53.860kids had their niche like there was the the kid who knew all the fortnight questions the kid who
00:06:57.960knew all the minecraft questions one kid was really into basketball uh the kid from new york
00:07:02.500didn't know anything about the erie canal which like i'm a little disappointed because i went to
00:07:08.100school in the new york state public education system and the erie canal was central to so
00:07:14.980much of the curriculum i guess they're not teaching it anymore which is like what is happening to our
00:07:19.220heritage oh my god but uh you should have seen the way the seventh grader reacted when producer mike
00:07:24.360tried to ask him trivia questions about the goddamn eerie canal yeah we we moved on to fortnight but
00:07:31.080the kid who was really like his thing that was like central to his identity was fan fan nights
00:07:36.680at freddy's i had no idea that that was a thing the kids are into it it was really cute i did not
00:07:42.740expect to come out of a marathon podcasting session and go immediately into hosting i would
00:07:48.500say pretty well organized for how impromptu it was you did it for like an hour yeah and when we
00:07:53.980when finally it was like this like this has been and i i love kids so i was you know enjoying it
00:07:58.980if i had not liked it i would have stopped it but when it was over and it was like okay if we don't
00:08:04.480leave now we'll be here all and like truly parents were coming in and being like okay it's time to go
00:08:09.660And they'd be like, no, this lady's doing Minecraft trivia.
00:08:12.400And so the parents would be like, OK, just come up to the room when she's done.
00:08:15.040Like that was the level of parents being like, this is great and fun.
00:08:18.840When we finally were done, we were like high fiving and like they were like following us, like Pied Piper style, following us out of the happy hour.
00:08:28.240And one kid was like, what time will you be here tomorrow?
00:08:31.940And then what's funny is that we had breakfast in the morning, the next morning, I guess today.
00:09:18.180I had done the interview and I knew that the feature was coming out.
00:09:22.480And then I get an email on Thursday and they say,
00:09:28.720the New York Times would like to send a photographer to your apartment
00:09:31.140to photograph you in your space this week.
00:09:34.280y'all i don't know how y'all are living i'm not living the kind of life where it's the new york
00:09:39.540time the gray lady is sending a photographer to my home i can feel good about turning that around
00:09:43.900in like 24 hours that's a little bit of a um challenge to be solved you got there though
00:09:51.920your place looks great thank you the photos looks great at one point i thought about renting a decoy
00:09:57.940Airbnb. Remember that? You were like, just have them in your places. Just get clean. Put all your
00:10:04.040junk in one room and then be like, the pictures are happening in this room, which is what I did.
00:10:08.400But yeah. Yeah. So you've been doing all this publicity for the book. And I know it's like
00:10:12.940taking a toll on you because the book is quite personal about a difficult time in your life.
00:10:18.640And so getting on the mic and telling that story many times, that's got to take a toll.
00:10:24.680Yeah, it is. It is. It is unusual. I've never worked on something quite so vulnerable. So it leaves you feeling exposed, you know. And I'll just say this, though. The reaction has been great. I've heard from a lot of people who have listened to it now. And thank you to everybody who got it.
00:10:43.600again if you want a sticker and a handwritten thank you please just send us an image of your
00:10:50.300order and we will send that out to you thank you to everybody who pre-ordered hope you all got your
00:10:54.200stickers and if you didn't let us know it is weird to write a book i've never written a book before
00:11:00.780obviously um so it would help me out if you bought it i guess i'll just i'll just leave it at that
00:11:07.300yeah and if you can't no pressure but it would help us out if people bought it you don't even
00:11:12.840have to read it yeah i would like it if you did yeah you should read it because it's good and
00:11:17.640thank you so much to everybody who has bought it and uh emailed us at hello at tangody to ask for
00:11:24.120your sticker we we love sending out stickers so what are we here to talk about today on today's
00:11:30.660episode bridget well to that end you know our book love at first prompt ai and the future of intimacy
00:11:35.280that just came out which you can get at love at first prompt.com it really looks at the ways that
00:11:40.520tech companies are increasingly inserting themselves into some of the most intimate
00:11:49.560A lot of that conversation has been really understandably focused on some of the most
00:11:55.480extreme examples, right? People falling in love with Chad CPT, people having AI boyfriends or
00:12:01.020girlfriends or having sexual relationships with AI. Frankly, the feedback that I'm hearing from
00:12:06.400people about the book is people will say, well, that's interesting, but that has nothing to do
00:12:11.320with me or that will never be me or I can't see myself in that at all. And I absolutely get why
00:12:16.380that's the reaction. That is the reaction that I would have had before reporting the book,
00:12:20.960to be honest with you. People who report some sort of intimate connection with AI sort of being over
00:12:28.180there and then the rest of us who have nothing to do with such nonsense being over here and never
00:12:33.680between shall meet right but it's absolutely how i thought about it before reporting this book and
00:12:38.060i can understand why so many people that's how they that's their thinking on it too but lately
00:12:43.460i have been thinking about this in a way that i think is much more relevant to the average person
00:12:49.120which is that you don't actually have to go to such an extreme of dating ai to have ai involved
00:12:56.480in your dating and loved life love life and in fact if you are single and if you're on online
00:13:02.280dating, some sort of dating app, there's a pretty good chance that AI is probably already in the
00:13:08.820mix when it comes to your love life. Because that's just how dating platforms work. They're
00:13:14.280using AI to recommend people, improve profiles, and help people choose photos. People are using
00:13:19.940ChatGBT and other AI tools to write flirtatious messages, analyze texts from the people that
00:13:27.180they're dating and get relationship advice. And some executives actually envision a future where
00:13:33.620the future of dating is AI agents dating each other. So even before you might swipe left or
00:13:39.020right on somebody that you meet on a dating app, your AI agent and their AI agent would go on a
00:13:44.080date and determine whether there might be sparks before you ever even see this person's picture,
00:13:49.440right? Like tech leaders have laid out that very specific vision for what they see as the future
00:13:55.720of dating. So I want folks to sort of forget things like AI boyfriends and things like that
00:14:01.280for a second, because I think a good question is, what happens when you are dating an actual human
00:14:05.920or trying to date an actual human, but AI is increasingly involved in how you meet that human,
00:14:11.640how you talk to that human, or how that human talks to you, how you guys get to know each other,
00:14:15.420and all of these kinds of like heady tech questions that I love asking in the podcast.
00:14:20.680But, and this is key, some of that is leading to outright scams.
00:14:26.480Like this story that I am freaking obsessed with.
00:14:30.240I know, Mike, I've sent you a million texts about it and like videos about it.
00:14:35.340I got to bring it to the microphone because I can't stop thinking about it.
00:14:38.080Like this scammer who was pretending to be an NFL player for the San Francisco 49ers.
00:14:44.960Spoiler alert, he didn't play for them at all.
00:14:46.400I want to ask, in what ways is AI being just more and more commonplace in all of our love lives, whether we want it to be there or not, how is that leading to changes in how we think about dating? And how is it boosting outright scammers and allowing them to increase their ability to scam?
00:15:04.780Yeah, I love this framing, you know, and it really aligns, I think, with the audio book in the sense that these extreme cases of people, you know, dating AI, while that's interesting, it's not happening in most people's lives. What is much more common in all of our lives is AI inserting itself in between human to human relationships.
00:15:28.080Exactly. And so I think that we should be talking about that much more common use case and frankly, risk for all of us. And I do want to take it back a little bit because this was all happening way before the proliferation of AI platforms like ChatGPT.
00:15:44.720I was on a podcast recently, and the host asked if I would ever let AI pick a date for me.
00:15:50.960And he asked this to me as if it was like a far-flung idea, some sort of future thing that, you know, would be so weird.
00:15:58.380And I thought about it, and I said, is that so different than an algorithm picking a date for me?
00:16:03.280Because dating platforms have been algorithmically mediating attraction for a very long time.
00:16:08.780You know, they don't simply give you a stack of every available single randomly in your city.
00:16:16.220There are systems that are making decisions about who gets shown to who and who might be a good match and like predicting how all of that works.
00:16:24.040There's this sociologist, April Williams, who has a really good book called Not My Type, Automating Sexual Racism and Online Dating.
00:16:31.220And she looks at how things like racism and sexism and all other kinds of isms can be embedded into online dating systems, particularly for Black women.
00:16:40.900We had an interview for a podcast that I was doing previously.
00:16:44.820And in that interview, she told me about this example of a Black woman who was using a dating app.
00:16:49.360And she was like, I'm not really getting any good matches.
00:16:51.160I'm just seeing the same people over and over again.
00:16:53.400So she tried a little experiment where she kept all of her pictures the same, but changed her listed race on the dating app to white.
00:17:02.900All of a sudden, that one change, she starts having a much better experience where she's being shown a lot more people who presumably, algorithmically, were not being shown to her when she had listed her race as what her actual race is, black.
00:17:18.380And so she starts thinking about all of these kind of questions about kind of what we usually tell ourselves when we talk about things like racial bias and online dating.
00:17:29.380And then we tend to have this idea of an individual user looking at a black woman and deciding, oh, I'm not attracted to her.
00:17:36.780But what if this person never appears in someone else's stack in the first place because an algorithm has already predicted, oh, they're not going to be a match for whatever reason.
00:17:45.840And even beyond that, I think it kind of gets into questions about what we think of as type, right? Your type doesn't come from nowhere. The people that we grew up around, what our families taught us, what couples we saw, what movies and TV and media we watched, our ideas about things like race and class and gender and beauty.
00:18:03.160All of those come together to form this internal idea that we all have about what it is to be desirable.
00:18:11.780So what we have now is millions of people bringing those preferences onto a dating platform.
00:18:18.540It's not like the platform is getting some pristine data set of objective human attraction, right?
00:18:25.680It is learning from us humans who live in that society that is shaped by all those things I was talking about.
00:18:31.520racism, sexism, and all of our other hang-ups. This is the point that I make about AI over and
00:18:36.260over again. With the way that a lot of AI and tech leaders speak about AI, it's very easy to think
00:18:43.300that AI is some magic, hyper-aware, computer, robot brain that knows all. But that's not true.
00:18:51.140AI is built by humans. It's trained by humans. It's trained by information that we give it,
00:18:56.020Right. And so it's simply all of the biases and isms and hangups and issues that we damn well know are present in humans.
00:19:05.000AI is simply reflecting that back at us and in some situations intensifying it.
00:19:11.260Yeah, it's so true. They're they're in there.
00:19:13.440They're like hard coded into the training sets and how disappointing and limiting that could be if those same biases and sort of rigid categories that exist that I think many of us try to rise above a little bit to connect with with other people.
00:19:35.920Well, if this technology just entrenched them further and calcified them, that would feel like a real missed opportunity.
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00:20:19.860A message from the government of Canada.
00:23:07.680I think I have always been a little bit afraid of grief.
00:23:12.580Of course, I wish I had my friends again, but I almost wouldn't change the experience of the loss in my life because it has changed me so much for the better.
00:23:21.740Tiffany Haddish, Anna Faris, Keri Russell, Kristen Johnston, and more.
00:23:28.020Listen to Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:23:35.100A decade ago, the ethanol kingpin of Iowa became the king of corn in Brazil.
00:23:40.540So we met with a lot of larger farmers, went from Bahia to Tocatines to Mato Grosso.
00:24:56.680Tinder has an AI-powered photo selector that scans the photos on your phone
00:25:01.120and can suggest which ones might work best as profile pictures.
00:25:05.620Grindr explicitly says that it wants to be an AI-first company.
00:25:08.960It's currently testing out an AI-powered premium tier called Edge, which would give you personalized profile recommendations, profile insights from an A-list that recaps meaningful chats and missed connections.
00:25:20.860Bumble's founder, Whitney Wolf-Hurd, has described a future where, again, you would have an AI dating concierge who could interact with other people's AI concierges to narrow down the possibilities of who you might actually want to meet.
00:25:34.320all of this. And so, again, none of this is as extreme as somebody dating AI or having sex with
00:25:41.220AI because you don't even need to have an AI partner or AI boyfriend and girlfriend to have
00:25:47.900this be an experience where AI is really, really dictating a lot of your love life. And I guess
00:25:54.500that's the question that I'm sort of interested in. And at what point are you dating that person
00:25:58.740through a layer of technology like AI? Yeah, that is such an interesting question. And I think it
00:26:03.960it parallels a lot of questions that people are asking about AI and how it shows up in our lives
00:26:08.500and affects our work and just how we exist in the world. And I feel like people really don't like
00:26:17.280AI, but also people are using a lot of AI. So where should we start here? Like, why would people
00:26:24.200want AI involved in their dating life? So this is something that we really have to spend a little
00:26:29.160bit of time on. And I want to speak carefully about it because it's a little bit complicated.
00:26:32.840I guess I want to give a little bit of a devil's advocate, if you could call it that, because I have not been out there in a long time.
00:26:39.840I'm not on dating apps. I'm not dating.
00:26:42.380But my friends who are out there and are on dating apps, the thing I hear about it from them consistently is that it's not a good time.
00:26:50.240In fact, a Forbes Health One Poll survey of 1,000 adults who had used dating apps in the previous year found that 78% felt that they were emotionally, mentally, or physically exhausted by dating apps sometimes.
00:27:04.300When you look at Gen Z respondents, that's 79%.
00:27:15.860And I think part of it is that dating and then being on the apps is work, right?
00:27:20.240You've got to take good pictures, make a profile, swipe through, come up with like an interesting opening line, come up with like a good, you know, little blurb on your profile.
00:27:31.060Have that same conversation over and over.
00:27:43.940and on top of that layer in some of the kind of interpersonal complexities that we all know come
00:27:51.680with dating fear of rejection feeling vulnerable it just being awkward as hell at times so I want
00:27:59.280to say that because it's very easy for me as somebody who's not experiencing that to be like
00:28:04.280oh people are having this miserable experience but like it's easy for me as somebody who is not
00:28:09.760doing all of this myself to sort of sit in judgment of people who are, because what those
00:28:15.660same people are saying is, hey, I don't like AI, but if AI might be able to make this process that
00:28:24.680is exhausting a little bit easier, we will try it. And that's pretty much the weird thing that
00:28:31.040is happening. Match and the Kinsey Institute's 2025 Singles in America study found that 26%
00:28:37.040of singles that they were using AI to enhance their dating lives up 333 percent over the last
00:28:43.660year. And there is this kind of funny contradiction there that I do think is kind of becoming a
00:28:50.560truism about how people think about AI, which is that people hate it. People also use it. So the
00:28:58.940same people who vocally don't like it also self-report using it. Gen Z is a great demographic
00:29:07.860that I think reflects that. Gen Z uses generative AI heavily while also expressing a lot of
00:29:14.520skepticism about it. A 2026 Gallup Walton Family Foundation GSV Venture survey found that 51% of
00:29:20.620Gen Z respondents used generative AI at least weekly while also having negative feelings about
00:29:27.200AI and a majority of this demographic had negative or skeptical feelings about the impacts of AI on
00:29:33.880things like critical thinking and learning. So again, this is just like, I'm just reporting
00:29:41.700the situation, which is that the vibe seems to be simultaneously, I don't want AI taking over my
00:29:51.040life. I don't want AI in my life. I specifically don't want AI in my love life. And also,
00:29:57.200Dating is exhausting. And also, the experience of dating right now is so bad that if you're telling me that maybe AI tools might make it better, I'll try it. I think it's a testament to how burnt out people are with dating, that they're willing to engage with technology and systems that they don't like in the hopes that it might help make the experience less bad.
00:30:20.120But it also reminds me of people's attitudes towards dating apps and dating in general, where, you know, it's like, I feel I have many friends who are trying to date and use dating apps who just hate everything about the process, but also like do want to be dating.
00:30:40.200And so they continue to engage with this thing that they don't like.
00:30:44.140there's probably other examples of situations like that, right, where we're forced to engage
00:30:49.780with systems that we don't really like. I could do a whole separate podcast about all the systems
00:30:55.140I am forced to engage with, sort of against my will that I don't like, that I engage with. I
00:31:00.260mean, that's kind of the trip of being a human in 2026. Yeah, right. So, you know, when it comes to
00:31:08.860AI, in an older iteration of this, an algorithm was your matchmaker. Now, AI can potentially be
00:31:14.820the matchmaker, the photographer, the stylist, the wingman, the flirtation coach, the relationship
00:31:20.040interpreter, and maybe even eventually your AI proxy. That is how, in the mix, in our dating
00:31:26.880lives, AI is. And that's a long list of roles, right? And so maybe part of the hesitation here
00:31:34.900is that when there is one thing filling all of those roles
00:31:38.680and that thing is a machine and not a person,
00:31:41.300like at some point does it start to become deceptive, right?
00:32:13.120Or how many times have you shown a text to a friend and said, you know, what does this text mean?
00:32:18.980Or had a friend read you your dating profile or dating a picture?
00:32:22.580In some capacity, we have always outsourced the business of dating to other people, other humans, really.
00:32:28.340Getting outside assistance with dating is not remotely new.
00:32:33.280And, you know, when I asked people what some of the use cases for AI in dating that they might be okay with, like where their individual mileage was, I got some interesting examples.
00:32:44.720AI might genuinely help somebody communicate better.
00:32:47.820Somebody who has social anxiety or some other issue might use it to organize their thoughts.
00:32:53.040Somebody dating in a language that they're not fluent in might use it to communicate more clearly.
00:32:57.460You know, somebody who struggles to express their emotions might use AI to figure out what they're trying to say.
00:33:05.140The fact that when I asked around, people were sort of giving me these answers.
00:33:09.520At what point does assistance become substitution, right?
00:33:13.700At what point is this not somebody using AI to like organize their thoughts or whatever?
00:33:18.900This is somebody just outsourcing what is supposed to be kind of like the reason why people date to AI.
00:33:27.460You know, if AI helps you phrase something that you already wanted to say, maybe that's one thing.
00:33:31.940If AI is determining what you should say and how you should present to another person, that feels like maybe it's a completely different thing.
00:33:40.100And I feel like what's clear to me from doing this research and talking to people is that I think that we're kind of inventing those norms right now in real time.
00:33:49.860But I do think AI is just so in the mix in when it comes to dating apps that I want to be careful because I don't want people to hear the version of the thing we hate when people say like AI is inevitable.
00:34:01.880That's not what I'm saying. But it is so enmeshed in the mechanisms of dating apps in 2026.
00:34:09.940But I do think we don't have a reality where we can not ask these questions.
00:34:14.100We are asking these questions about, you know, where the line is and what's okay and what's deceptive right now.
00:34:20.780And I think that we really should be asking those questions because the reality is, is every dating platform is also an AI platform in 2026.
00:34:31.880Yeah, I like that sort of careful phrasing because, yeah, really reject the argument that, like, AI is inevitable.
00:34:38.960So everybody just needs to, like, get on board or, you know, get bent.
00:34:42.800But I think you're right that it like it is out there and people are using it and these dating apps are increasingly using it in various ways.
00:34:51.680And so, yeah, like people need to be asking these questions.
00:34:54.240I'm sure people are asking these questions, right?
00:34:56.120Like whether you're using the AI features or not, the other people on the other end of the dating app very well may be.
00:35:02.880So I have a good example of that because I saw this post on Threads where a woman had taken screenshots of a conversation that she had with a guy that she met on a dating app.
00:35:11.180And you know how you can tell when a message is written by Chachupiti?
00:35:15.640It was like obvious to me that this person was using Chachupiti to write their messages.
00:35:22.760They weren't like all over the place or like out of pocket.
00:35:25.560But then something happens and it's like he stopped having time.
00:35:31.960Like maybe he was like in the car or something or at work.
00:35:34.520And like he stopped having time to run the messages through Chachupiti.
00:35:39.800So she hits a very stark difference. He had previously been sending these like perfectly written grammatically correct good syntax messages that were exactly the kind of messages that you would want to get from your potential partner.
00:35:54.660something splits and he's typing like jeffrey epstein like everything misspelled using you
00:36:02.540instead of the word spelled out y-o-u it's like texting like a teenager and what's funny is that
00:36:11.220the internet was sort of divided some people were like okay so he has bad grammar and he's using
00:36:17.820chad gpt to like fix his grammar because he cares about how he presents to you isn't isn't that what
00:36:23.780y'all should want like there's a lot of like weird hostility like isn't that what y'all supposed to
00:36:27.020want damn and then a lot of people being like come on and for me again this is like your mileage may
00:36:32.480vary I'm the kind of person when I'm dating it matters to me how somebody communicates to me
00:36:37.440I'm a writer I'm a woman of letters and words if you will it matters to me how somebody communicates
00:36:44.940to me if somebody sent me a text message who I was meant to be like dating or having sex with
00:36:50.060and it was like every word misspelled you instead of the letter you that would be a problem for me
00:36:55.100I don't know maybe it makes me classist I that wouldn't be that's that's something that I care
00:36:58.800about yeah so that's a great example and so is that being deceptive you know and because
00:37:07.240there's information in the way that somebody texts right like whether or not somebody has
00:37:14.040taken the time of their life to learn good grammar to learn how to write well right like some people
00:37:19.100really value writing skills other people think of it as a means to an end let's say yes at best and
00:37:26.280so isn't like the point of dating to get to actually know a person to get to a place of
00:37:32.060intimacy with them and so if you are using a tool to artificially present yourself on this
00:37:38.540dimension of grammar and writing that like way over represents your ability aren't you kind of
00:37:44.480just like wasting people's time like your time and theirs or setting people up for a big
00:37:49.140disappointment i would feel deceived and again this is just my personal take so i i honestly
00:37:53.560am not prepared to defend this take it just like is how i feel because you might ask like oh well
00:37:59.400what if they were using a dictionary would be what if they were looking up words in a dictionary to
00:38:02.660spell them correctly is that different that's way different right that's what i'm saying like
00:38:06.620somebody busting out a thesaurus or a dictionary so that they can craft the perfect message to you
00:38:12.880is so different than somebody just like copy and pasting something from chat gpp i would feel
00:38:18.380deceived i would be like why are you presenting yourself as a someone who cares about how you
00:38:27.340communicate yeah to someone who for whom communication is probably the most important
00:38:33.420thing to me i would feel deceived yeah it sounds crazy and i know it's kind of a funny example
00:38:39.900But I think behind it, it is a real question. Like, you know, some of the AI assistive tools in these dating apps are things like, you know, it can resurface conversations for you.
00:38:51.320Or it can, you know, help you craft how you respond to somebody via AI-generated props.
00:38:58.840And so if you're the kind of person, if you're dating somebody and you casually told them, oh, my favorite flower is a sunflower, and they remembered that and they brought you sunflowers or referenced that and you're touched by that and that makes you want to date them.
00:39:12.400If the only reason they were able to do that is because of an AI-enabled tool that resurfaces what she, when she was yap, yap, yap, and what she said her favorite flower is, like, maybe this is saying something about me that I'm so bothered by this.
00:39:27.400It might also depend on, like, what are your goals for being on these apps, right?
00:39:31.060Like, are you trying to find your partner, or are you just trying to hook up?
00:39:36.860You know, the stakes are different, and the rules might be a little bit different.
00:39:41.740Yeah. And again, I haven't been on a dating app in a really long time. And boy, what a time that was. I do think that it matters what you're looking for.
00:39:53.160And if you are someone who is looking for an authentic, meaningful human connection, I can understand why some of these instances of AI where the platforms are saying, hey, this just makes it easier to date people, reduces some of the friction.
00:40:09.200i can see why that feels deceptive and does it change how you experience those interactions if
00:40:17.760the interactions that you're having with somebody you're having them because of something that's
00:40:21.300like an ai assistive tool that is embedded in a dating platform i think it is worth asking
00:40:26.540whether or not that knowledge changes the interaction for you but again this is like
00:40:32.080a your mileage may vary thing i'm curious what people think this i can i apparently i'm in real
00:40:36.540time realizing how much it would bother me. Yeah. And what if the person you're talking to
00:40:41.680is not seeking authentic connection? What if they're seeking a mark? I am so glad you asked
00:40:48.880because it sets me up beautifully to talk about my real passion, which is scams. Y'all know I love
00:40:55.180a scam. I hear about a good scam. I'm reading every comment. I'm like, I want to see the photos.
00:43:16.180I think I have always been a little bit afraid of grief.
00:43:21.400Of course, I wish I had my friends again, but I almost wouldn't change the experience of the loss in my life because it has changed me so much for the better.
00:43:30.200Tiffany Haddish, Anna Faris, Keri Russell, Kristen Johnston, and more.
00:43:36.500Listen to Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:43:41.780whether you're stepping up to the starting line of a marathon or just trying to take the first
00:43:47.900step toward a big scary goal the conversation in your head is usually the same do i have what
00:43:53.340it takes i'm emily abadi and on hurdle with emily abadi we dive into the grit vulnerability and
00:43:59.440mindset that fuels our greatest comebacks i talk to elite athletes olympic champions industry
00:44:04.800change makers and everyday runners about how they face self-doubt redefine success and keep moving
00:44:10.480forward when life gets heavy. I just love to say I never know who's watching so you want to make
00:44:15.340sure you you through and through and you just stay true to who you are. Yeah your path might change
00:44:20.940because different things come on your path to disrupt it but it's just putting you on a new
00:44:24.340path and the skills you have to have faith at the skills that you've learned and developed over time
00:44:28.200are going to continue to bring you success. When the world is burning and crashing around you
00:44:32.520will you still say fight for your dream? Will you still say it's possible? Will you still believe
00:44:37.240you're a good person. Can you still see the brighter side of tomorrow? It's motivation,
00:44:42.180real talk, and practical wisdom for life on and off the run. Listen to Hurdle with Emily Abadi
00:44:47.740on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:44:53.220A decade ago, the ethanol kingpin of Iowa became the king of corn in Brazil.
00:44:58.820So we met with a lot of larger farmers, went from Bahia to Tocatines to Mato Grosso.
00:46:02.500We spent the first part of the episode having these sort of like high-minded conversations about tech and what does it mean and all of that.
00:46:08.000But there is such a higher stakes version of this authenticity problem.
00:46:13.180And that is, what if AI isn't helping the person you're talking to communicate with you?
00:46:19.440What if AI is helping someone manufacture the person that you're talking to in order to scam?
00:46:26.300Because that is part of this AI conversation.
00:46:29.800Now, to be real, online dating and online romance has always required a certain amount
00:46:35.820of trust, especially for women, right?
00:46:38.140Is this person really who they say they are?
00:48:05.520This is kind of a tangent, but we watched that Ashley Madison documentary.
00:48:09.500And the documentary itself is very good.
00:48:12.080But the thing that they kind of treat as like a throwaway given was that on the hookup app, Ashley Madison,
00:48:19.020it was just men talking to bots i was like wait a minute can we can we like slow down on this like
00:48:26.780that to me was like wild and so like you're so right that's kind of the scammier the platform
00:48:32.380you know if you put your exes and your ashley madison's over here the less they care about
00:48:37.200preventing and cracking down on bots the least if it's a continuum like some platforms don't
00:48:42.600give a shit they're like bots welcome yeah yeah right and like with x their whole thing is you
00:48:49.740have to be here everyone has to be here like we don't care whether you want to be here or not
00:48:53.240yes um dating apps there's like competition there exactly and so that's why dating apps and
00:48:59.140platforms do have some incentive to make sure that you're a platform where people understand
00:49:03.800like it's for real humans real humans are there it's not just a proliferation of bots yeah we
00:49:08.040We should also just say, like, this episode is not sponsored by any dating app.
00:49:13.020It is brought to you by Baha Marv, but like these are just like our opinions.
00:49:16.120There is no dating app sponsorship here.
00:49:19.020Yes. And so AI is kind of showing up on both sides of this issue.
00:49:23.980Bumble says that it has deception detector that uses AI and machine learning to identify fake spam and scam profiles, along with obviously human moderation.
00:49:34.000And we even see dating platforms increasingly turning to a lot of the things that we've talked about pretty extensively on the podcast, things like biometric tools or facial recognition.
00:49:43.700Y'all know how I feel about all of that.
00:49:45.180As these AI assisted scams get more sophisticated.
00:49:49.700So we're kind of in this bizarre world where AI can both be used to manufacture a convincing fake human while other AI is being asked to determine whether or not that human is fake.
00:50:01.980Like, that's a, that's, I don't know why I have such trouble with that conundrum.
00:50:06.820This is, I don't want to go off on another tangent, but when we were off the air,
00:50:10.980Substack did that partnership with Pangram, which we talked about in the episode about Mia Ballard,
00:50:17.000her novel Shy Girl getting pulled from its publisher because of allegations of AI use.
00:50:21.860And we made that episode months and months and months ago.
00:50:25.280Pangram, I think, has since had a little bit of a honeymoon period where people are liking it now.
00:50:31.500And I guess that's fine. I still personally feel some kind of a way about a landscape where AI is used to determine whether or not something is AI. I don't know why. It just seems like it's AI the whole way down. I don't know. I don't I don't like turning to AI to verify whether or not something is AI. Just seems like more AI.
00:50:57.780Something about it feels a little off. Yeah. Don't make me defend this position. I guess on this episode, I'm coming to the microphone unwilling to defend my taste. That sounds like it.
00:51:09.400Well, you're putting them out there. That's the important part.
00:51:11.580And so let's talk about how AI is poised to supercharge romance scams.
00:51:23.720Just create or assume an identity, establish intimacy, build trust, and eventually exploit that trust for money, goods, or services.
00:51:32.860What AI can change is the cost, speed, and potential scale of manufacturing that relationship.
00:51:39.560I think it just tamps down some of the barriers to somebody being able to effectively do this and do it at scale.
00:51:49.640The FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report says that it received 22,364 complaints containing AI-related information with more than $893 million in reported losses because of romance scams.
00:52:03.940And the FBI specifically calls out romance scams, saying that scammers are increasingly using AI-generated fake profiles and scripts to make their speech and the content around their scams sound more believable to the targets.
00:52:19.040In 2025, victims reported more than $19 million in losses from confidence and romance scams with a likely AI nexus.
00:52:29.960And I think if you think about all of the things that a scammer has to do traditionally to, like, make you trust them, a convincing identity, a backstory, believable pictures, writing messages that sound convincing.
00:52:43.900I remember talking to somebody I met in a dating app who told me that they were an attorney.
00:53:56.480So, like, you have to really remember a lot of what you told people and avoid contradicting yourselves. So you can really see how a tool like AI could be really helpful in all of that. And not just that, you know, the need to overcome a language barrier, the need to respond in ways that make the target feel seen and cared for.
00:54:20.000From reporting our audiobook, Love at First Prompt, AI and the Future of Intimacy, I know that AI is actually pretty good at coming up with BS messages that might make somebody feel temporarily loved and seen and cared for.
00:54:41.960And not only can it do all of those things, but it can do them at vast scale, right?
00:54:47.580Like do all of those things, reaching out to thousands, potentially millions of people all at once.
00:54:56.240Exactly. Exactly. And the FBI says that AI makes it possible to create convincing synthetic social media profiles and personalized conversations, often in mass quantity.
00:55:06.280So you can just be I mean, if you I hate to use the phishing analogy, but like a big net, more fish.
00:55:12.020Yeah. And I guess that's the part of this that doesn't like really gets me that AI is not really inventing like a new kind of manipulation. But that doesn't mean that it's not dangerous. It is making this old form, this tried and true romance scam that we all know cheaper, easier, faster, and more importantly, scalable.
01:00:41.920So let's get into this story of this fake 49ers player,
01:00:47.520because I think it's a perfect example of how weird all of this is getting.
01:00:52.640So, again, I know that you know about it because I've sent you a million text messages about it.
01:00:57.120So federal prosecutors say that a man named Dajon Love posed as a San Francisco 49ers NFL player and with an alleged accomplice defrauded at least 26 women out of $1.3 million.
01:01:11.180I will say to his credit, he could have used AI to generate images of himself as an NFL player or other kinds of content around his scam.
01:01:24.960It sounds weird to say, but to his credit, he was like out there in the in the meat space, like I guess like bought a fake 49ers helmet and would physically go to like high school football fields and take video of him doing like fake NFL drills.
01:01:43.940By the way, if you have not, like, please look up some of how he looks doing these.
01:01:49.420Like, there's videos of him, like, skipping on a high school football field.
01:01:55.240There's videos of him doing fake drills on the beach.
01:02:12.480But like when you look at NFL players, they look like people that you're like, OK, this is somebody who uses their body as their instrument in professional sport.
01:02:20.080They're a professional athlete. This guy, he doesn't even look like he goes to the gym.
01:02:24.480Like, you know, I'm saying that as somebody who doesn't go to the gym.
01:02:28.760Wow. OK, so but he was out there like creating these analog old school scam materials.
01:02:35.280Yes, like I was like, he committed to the bit. Also, there's this thing where he like was sending these women these like meandering videos of him talking. Again, there are things I don't want I don't want to blame the victim because these women I feel I hope these women get their justice. But these things that would have at least struck me as off putting, they might not have been like, well, this is a scammer. But they would have struck me if somebody sends me a 30 minute video of them just kind of meandering talking about how much money they have.
01:03:04.840and this and that like no they were that long there are so many of them and they're very long
01:03:11.480and so you might be quite so if he wasn't using ai to like manufacture his images you might be
01:03:17.920asking well okay why are you including this in an ai scam because he actually did something i think
01:03:23.000was a little bit more like you don't see it as often so you know when you google something and
01:03:29.260You get that Google AI overview, which I will fully admit I have, like, been guilty of just, like, looking at me, like, okay, that's what it says.
01:03:37.620Yeah, I mean, me too, it's so convenient, but you really do have to look past it because it gets things wrong.
01:03:43.560All the fucking time it gets things wrong.
01:03:45.740So nobody should be trusting the AI overview.
01:03:48.020And basically, he was able to very easily gamify the Google AI overview so that when these women would meet him, the first thing you're going to do when you meet somebody who's telling them they're an NFL player, you Google them.
01:04:02.060Well, the AI overview would say he does play for the San Francisco 49ers.
01:04:48.200Like, so many of these systems that we depend on just assume that people are telling the truth and are not set up to catch deception.
01:04:55.240And it seems like the AI overview was completely hijacked in this case.
01:05:00.320And I think it shows that the women who were scammed, it sounds like they were following what I think is like a tried and true basic online dating safety practice of like Googling the person.
01:05:13.160But now with Google AI overview, you can't just Google it.
01:12:20.260If you really want to get into it, it's almost like, you know, when I mean, I've
01:12:24.360been nagged many times but like when someone's nagging you the concept is that you make this
01:12:30.060person feel bad about themselves or insecure so that they're more wanting to prove that they're
01:12:34.920actually good or hot or whatever right that they're worth your time that's the sort of
01:12:39.540psychological trick of nagging and so this is almost a sort of like financial nag of like
01:12:44.820prove to me that you actually are worth me getting together with by investing in my scam company
01:12:51.540Yeah. Oh, interesting. And I guess that's been a part of like confidence grifts forever, right? Like building people up and then breaking them down and offering them like the path to achieve this thing that you're kind of telling them that they can have, but also that they don't. Scammers. Yeah. Like, I guess, again, he's, you know, taken analog photos and just relying on good old classic confidence grifts.
01:13:19.800Yeah. I also think in 2026, life is hard, right? Everything is expensive. Everybody is like working their ass off. Nobody has time for the kinds of things that nourish us or bring us joy. I mean, I guess I'm at the beach, but it's not like most people. It feels increasingly rare to be able to have these moments, right?
01:13:41.180And life is hard. I think somebody's selling you that they want to make it so that you aren't just financially struggling, but that you'll have this NFL wife lifestyle. You'll drive the fancy car.
01:13:57.320You'll you know, you'll it's I think offering I mean, I think I can understand why women were enticed by this, I guess is what I'm saying, like offering not just financial security, but a specific kind of lifestyle that I think is like coveted.
01:14:11.800Totally. I can see how that would be attractive. And with, you know, AI so available to help scammers make those pitches, connect with people, build the confidence, build the intimacy, reach out to large numbers of people.
01:14:28.040it's rough out there it's it's dangerous you know and so what do we do with that what do we do with
01:14:33.540the fact that you know and specifically in this realm of dating uh like you mentioned we have
01:14:40.240this ai arms race of scammers using ai to scam platforms trying to use ai to detect the scams
01:14:49.920and protect people but ultimately scammers are going to get through right like i think
01:14:53.500if you're a person who's putting yourself out there in 2026, you're probably going to be
01:14:58.880exposed to some scammers. How should people deal with that, Bridget? Yeah, well, I think the
01:15:03.440question is like, what happens when the signals that we use to recognize things like sincerity
01:15:09.060can be synthesized? And it's something that I was coming back to again and again when we were
01:15:14.020reporting the audiobook. Intimacy requires things like vulnerability. You cannot connect with another
01:15:20.840person without taking some risk that person might hurt you, scam you, reject you, misunderstand you,
01:15:27.980disappoint you. Now, technology has been used to mediate that for a long time, but AI really
01:15:34.180introduces a new problem that the signals that we traditionally use to decide whether another human
01:15:39.340is sincere are already increasingly being outsourced to machines that are pretty good
01:15:46.900mimicking that and producing that right so whether it's a beautiful picture a thoughtfully well
01:15:52.600crafted and grammatically correct message that's going to be very important to me remembering that
01:15:59.400somebody loves sunflowers or like remembering some like small detail that somebody told you
01:16:03.320you know knowing exactly what to say when you're upset all of these things right so the question
01:16:08.280is not would you date an ai i think the real thing we ought to be asking is what happens to dating
01:16:14.060when you cannot always easily tell what parts of another person's romantic performance actually came from that person.
01:16:22.180Maybe the answer is, like, in-person experience, right?
01:16:26.380Like, people can't be hiding behind AI if you're actually meeting face-to-face and having, like, in-person conversations.
01:16:32.880Maybe that's where people should prioritize.
01:16:35.800I'm so glad you said that because as people are reporting more interest in what feels like authentic human one-on-one connection through real IRL meets based experiences, some dating apps are trying to get in on that as well by providing meetups and that kind of thing to sort of see if that's what people are looking for.
01:17:00.580And, you know, I just think that we're in this era where these parts of our lives that at one time felt like sacred, right? Who we love, who we have sex with, who we click with, the relationship between us and ourselves, our inner worlds are increasingly mediated by technology like AI that is sort of good at having deception or lies or hallucinations or whatever you want to call it.
01:17:30.280scams to that dynamic. And I just think that we're in a very, very interesting world when it comes to
01:17:36.560all of this. And you mentioned earlier about that sociologist, April Williams, the author of that
01:17:42.380book that I love, that I recommend wholeheartedly, Not My Type. We had a good conversation. And from
01:17:48.480all of her research, I was like, oh, well, should people just be deleting dating apps? Is that the
01:17:53.560answer? And I know a lot of this conversation has kind of felt doom and gloom. But April Williams,
01:17:58.640who wrote that book is like, no, don't delete dating apps. And I don't want this conversation
01:18:03.200to sound like technology has rumored dating because I don't even believe that.
01:18:08.060But April Williams, she told me that even though she wrote a definitive book about dating apps and
01:18:13.700how horrible those experiences can be, particularly for Black women at times, she said that she does
01:18:18.860not think that people should abandon them. And she met her own husband on Tinder. And it's actually
01:18:24.380a cute story they lived less than a mile from each other and she had apparently physically
01:18:30.040gone into the bakery where her now husband worked but they and that they probably had crossed paths
01:18:36.240like dozens of times without even knowing it because they lived so close to each other they
01:18:39.560went to a lot of the same places but he was really introverted they just had very different lives
01:18:44.580and they probably would have never actually met and crossed paths without technology
01:18:50.500tinder in this case putting them in front of each other so when they finally do meet because of
01:18:56.900tinder they go on a date she laughs she says that she laughed with him in a way that she had never
01:19:01.120laughed with anyone before and that they instantly clicked right and i think that that is exactly the
01:19:06.940promise of technology that i think that we should be able to have right this idea that technology
01:19:13.200can introduce us to people that we might have never encountered otherwise it can bridge geographic
01:19:18.860social, racial, cultural divides. It can help somebody put their best foot forward. It can make
01:19:25.300the logistics of dating maybe a little bit easier. You can meet somebody that you probably have
01:19:29.480crossed paths with a half a dozen times in your life, but never actually thought about in that
01:19:34.560way because you would never have come into contact with each other like that. And so I think that is
01:19:40.000really where I want to land. And that is the question of what we want technology. If it is
01:19:47.840just going to be in our intimate lives in this way? What is it that we want it to do? Do we want
01:19:53.140technology that helps us encounter people and then gets out of the way for two humans to connect and
01:19:57.800get to know each other? How much of the courtship and the business of dating is it actually even a
01:20:03.420good idea to be outsourcing to technology? You know, what kinds of verification and safety systems
01:20:08.180do we need so that people can sincerely and safely communicate with each other? And I think
01:20:14.380it kind of gets back to this idea of what kind of tech future we want and deserve. I don't think
01:20:22.060we deserve a tech future where technology like AI is just increasingly being used to further
01:20:28.260entrench these higher, these very rigid hierarchies that already dictate so much of our lived
01:20:33.440experiences. And we don't have to have that. There is another version of what we get with technology
01:20:38.980that I think that we should all be advocating for.
01:20:41.280Well, Mike, as always, thank you for being here in beautiful Bahamar.
01:20:46.540I just kind of give a little shout out because it's been such an amazing time here in the Bahamas.
01:20:52.120I don't get to have experiences like this often, so I'm really feeling a lot of gratitude.
01:20:57.080I have so much gratitude for Dante from Bahamar for being a great host and setting this up for us.
01:21:03.080I am a pain in the butt and he was awesome rocking with me every step of the way.