Hello everyone, I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.

We are almost to Valentine's Day, so today we're going to take an adventure into the world of dating, and for better or worse, how AI is changing the way that we pursue romance, especially

when it comes to the dating apps.

According to Pew Research, about 30 percent of U.S. adults are single, so if they are looking

for love, how are they doing it these days?

Here to make a smart on that is Jason Parham, who's a senior writer at Wired,

writing about the internet culture, the future of sex, and the intersection of race and power in

America. Welcome to the show, Jason. Thanks for having me, Kimberly. So let's start with the easy one.

What about this topic, this intersection between technology and human relationships, makes you want to write about it?

Well, I think it's, you know, love is the thing that connects all of us. We're all craving connection and intimacy. And I think right now, you know, coming out of the pandemic, and I think people are looking for ways to find each other in new ways. And so I think for me as a reporter, it was just a really

interesting topic and coverage area to dive into for Wired.

Yeah, especially when it comes to sort of the way that technology shows up in this space. And I feel

like most of the technology stories are covering these days have to do with AI. So how is AI showing up

in the dating world, particularly on the apps?

Yeah, we're in a big AI dating Renaissance era where the industry went all in on virtual

intimacy last year in 2025. And so I think the focus, you know, we saw the focus shift from

an age of endless swipes, the tenders, if you will, to sort of AI-powered matchmaking. But what does that mean,

right? And so I think for the big four, which is like hinge, tender, bumble, and grinder,

generally the mission is the same. They're leaning into AI tools that improve match quality

and also cut down on sort of low effort profiles. They really want to reduce what they call

swipe fatigue. So that's tailored prompts

we're saying. That's helping people plan dates. That's conversation scaffolding in the sort of early

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