FIELD NOTES · RESEARCH

Chatfishing in numbers: how many UK and US daters let AI write their messages, and how their matches react

Up to a third of British daters say AI helps write their messages, yet two thirds oppose AI talking on their behalf. We gather the UK and US survey data on who uses it, who minds, and whether anyone can tell.

By Anna Y. · Founder Published 25.10.202610 min read

Two smartphones with chat bubbles and a red heart between them, illustrating online dating conversations — Photo: Omar Lopez-Rincon / Unsplash

How US men and women use AI in dating (% of respondents, Arrows survey, 1,008 singles, February 2026)

Men: AI writes opening lines41%

Women: AI writes opening lines27%

Women: AI analyses chats52%

Men: AI analyses chats39%

Women: call it digital catfishing60%

Men: call it digital catfishing55%

Source: Arrows survey, reported by Global Dating Insights, March 2026

On 20 October 2026, Match Group published its Spark Study of 3,007 single adults in the UK. One finding stood out: 66% of singles oppose AI conducting conversations on their behalf. The same study found that two thirds of Gen Z singles have already used AI for something dating-related.

That gap sums up where dating is in late 2026. Plenty of people let a chatbot help with their messages. Far fewer are happy to find out the person they are talking to did the same. The habit even has a name: chatfishing, catfishing with a language model instead of a fake photo.

Below we pull together the UK and US survey data: how many daters use AI to write messages, how this splits by gender and age, how matches react, and whether anyone can actually tell. A word of caution first. Almost every survey here was paid for by a dating app or a tech company, and each asks a slightly different question. We name the source and sample for every number so you can judge it yourself. For the bigger picture of what the apps themselves have built, see our guide to AI in dating.

How many daters use AI to write messages?

The honest answer is somewhere between a quarter and a half, depending on who asks and how.

United Kingdom

32% of UK dating app users use tools like ChatGPT to coach them or write messages to potential partners. Censuswide for the verification company Sumsub, 2,000 adults who used dating apps in the last 18 months, fieldwork 28 January to 4 February 2026 (Sumsub).
36% of UK daters admit using AI tools for messages or profiles, up from 21% a year earlier. Survey by the lingerie brand Pour Moi, sample not disclosed (Global Dating Insights, March 2026).
66% of Gen Z singles have used AI for dating-related purposes, from advice to date planning. Match Group Spark Study, 3,007 UK singles, October 2026.

United States

26% of US singles used AI to enhance their dating lives, up 333% in a year. Match and the Kinsey Institute, Singles in America 2025, 5,001 singles (company-funded).
54% of US singles have used AI tools at some point in dating. 45% use it for messaging pointers, 37% to keep conversations going and 34% to write opening lines. Arrows, a video dating service, 1,008 singles, February 2026 (Global Dating Insights).
74% of US singles aged 18 to 39 use ChatGPT, and about 64% say AI helps them start and keep conversations. Match Group, around 1,000 singles, June 2026 (Axios).

Why the spread? “Have you ever used AI for anything in dating” catches far more people than “does AI write your messages”. Samples also differ: some surveys ask only active app users, others all singles. The direction is consistent, though. Use rose sharply in a year in both countries (from 21% to 36% in the Pour Moi data, and by 333% in Singles in America), and messaging is one of the main uses, alongside profiles and date ideas.

Men and women use AI differently

The clearest gender data comes from the US Arrows survey. Men use AI to write. Women use it to read.

Opening lines: 41% of men use AI to generate pickup lines, against 27% of women.
Reading the other side: 52% of women use AI to analyse chats and ask for advice, against 39% of men.
Judgement: 60% of women and 55% of men call AI-written profiles or conversations a form of “digital catfishing”.
Forgiveness: if a great first date later turned out to rest on heavily AI-written messages, 38% of men would still go on a second date. Only 21% of women would.

An older UK study points the same way. In 2023, Kaspersky found that 54% of single British men would be open to using ChatGPT to seem funnier or smarter to a match (Kaspersky UK, sample not disclosed). It is dated now, but it shows the pattern was there before chatbots became an everyday tool.

Age: millennials lead, Gen Z has the most doubts

You might expect Gen Z to be the heaviest users. The US data says millennials are just ahead.

Arrows (US, 2026): millennials 58%, Gen Z 51%, Gen X 48% have used AI in dating.
Hily T.R.U.T.H. report (US, 2025, 1,559 daters): 87% of millennials and 82% of Gen Z use AI for tasks like drafting messages or building profiles (Global Dating Insights).
Singles in America 2025: nearly half of Gen Z singles use AI in dating, against 26% of all singles.
Match Spark Study (UK, 2026): 66% of Gen Z singles have used AI for dating.

Gen Z is also the most uneasy. In the Arrows survey, 75% of Gen Z said AI makes dating feel more artificial. In Hily’s data, 53% of Gen Z and 66% of millennials said they would feel less confident on a real date after using AI to talk to the match beforehand. Many young daters use AI and dislike what it does to dating at the same time.

How matches react when they find out

This is where the double standard shows. People forgive their own AI use far more easily than other people’s.

Turn-off: 62% of Gen Z and 70% of millennials would be put off if a match used AI during early messaging (Hily, US).
Less attraction: 66% of UK daters would feel less attracted to someone they suspected of using AI (Pour Moi). Even among people who used AI themselves, 54% called the practice dishonest.
Worse than bad grammar: 56% of US singles see an AI-written pickup line as a bigger turn-off than poor spelling (Arrows).
Ghosting: 1 in 5 US singles have ghosted someone they suspected of using AI in chats. 17% would end things at once on finding out, and 16% would feel betrayed (Arrows).
Trust: 84% of UK app users say AI-generated content makes it harder to trust people, up from 64% a year earlier (Sumsub).

Here is the twist. In a blind test, the same Arrows respondents were more likely to show interest in AI-written dating bios (36%) than human-written ones (24%). AI text often works. It is the discovery that hurts. A 2026 interview study of 45 dating app users in Telematics and Informatics found the same split: senders saw the chatbot as an editor that helped them say what they really felt, while recipients who found out felt deceived. The researchers call it the Cyrano effect, after the poet who wrote love letters for someone else.

Can people tell when a message was written by AI?

Many people think they can. The evidence says they mostly cannot.

60% of current US online daters believe they have chatted with someone whose messages were written by AI. Norton/Gen survey by Dynata, 1,001 US adults, December 2024 (Gen Digital). This measures suspicion, not proof.
In the same survey, only 46% correctly spotted an AI-generated image, roughly a coin toss.
28% of UK app users are not confident they can spot deepfakes or AI-manipulated profiles, and 67% already take steps to verify matches (Sumsub, 2026).
Lab research is sobering. In a 2024 study in Scientific Reports, people identified whether short texts were written by a human or by AI with about 57% accuracy, barely better than chance. In a 2025 Turing-test study, judges chatting with GPT-4.5 and a human at the same time picked the AI as the human 73% of the time (arXiv preprint).

Do daters use AI to catch AI?

Some do, but no major survey we found has measured how many. The closest figure is the 52% of US women who paste chats into AI for analysis (Arrows). Part of that is asking “does this sound like a bot?”, though the survey did not split it out.

Dedicated tools exist. A New Zealand developer released an iPhone app called Chatfish that checks screenshots of conversations, but its accuracy has not been independently tested, The Next Web reported in July 2026. General AI-text detectors are unreliable on short, casual messages, and lightly edited AI text often passes as human. No major dating app has deployed AI-text detection. The apps ban AI-manipulated photos, but generally not AI-written messages. Match Group’s chief executive Spencer Rascoff has said AI use that happens off the platform is hard to control.

Signs a match may be using AI, and why none is proof

No single sign settles it. People who write carefully can sound like a chatbot, and chatbots can be told to sound casual. Patterns are more telling than any one message:

Polished but generic: warm, well-structured replies that could be sent to anyone, with no detail from your own messages.
Tone shifts: witty and fluent in text, flat or very different on a call. 70% of UK daters say they have met someone online who seemed very different in person (Pour Moi).
The same rhythm every time: similar length, similar structure, a question at the end of each message.
Dodged specifics: vague answers when you ask about their day, their street, their actual opinion.

The most reliable check is the oldest one. Move to a short voice or video call before you invest much time. Researchers and app safety teams give the same advice, and it also protects you from romance scammers, who now use AI to write their scripts too.

If you use AI in your own messages

The data suggests a line that most daters accept: AI as an editor is fine, AI as a ghostwriter is not.

Use it to brainstorm an opener or check the tone, then rewrite in your own words.
Never let it carry a whole conversation. The person will meet you, not the model.
If someone asks whether you used AI, tell the truth. Being found out is what costs people dates.
Keep private details out of chatbots. Pasting a match’s messages into an AI tool shares their words too.

Meeting soon? Our first date safety guide covers how to check a match is who they say they are.

Frequently asked questions

What is chatfishing?

Chatfishing means using an AI chatbot to write some or all of your dating messages, so your match is partly talking to software. Unlike classic catfishing, the photos and the person are usually real.

How many people use AI on dating apps?

In 2026 surveys, about a third of UK dating app users said AI helps write their messages (Sumsub, 32%; Pour Moi, 36%). In the US, 26% to 54% of singles have used AI in dating, depending on the survey.

Can AI detectors tell if a dating message was written by ChatGPT?

Not reliably. Detectors struggle with short, informal and edited texts. A video call is a far better check than any tool.

Is using AI to write dating messages dishonest?

Most daters think it can be. 58% of US singles call it a form of catfishing, and 54% of UK users who tried it still call it dishonest. Help with wording is widely accepted. Letting AI speak for you is not.

Sources

Cover photo: Omar Lopez-Rincon / Unsplash