Not to toot my own horn, but I don’t usually have a problem getting dates. (I just have a problem keeping them – ha.) However, when I was asked if I wanted to try out a dating app called Rizz, an AI-powered program, I was intrigued.
Rizz utilizes AI technology to formulate witty responses in order to help you get dates. For the unfamiliar, the word “rizz” stems from the word “charisma,” and when you say someone has rizz, you’re essentially saying they have game. For the people who don’t have game (I’m not included in this group), that’s where Rizz comes in.
There are two versions of the app, which you can download on either Apple or Google Play: one is a built-in keyboard that you can enable at any time to come up with sentences based on prompts you give it, and another is more of a dating assistant, where you can upload screenshots of conversations or someone’s dating app profile and the app will feed you potential responses. Both options are free initially, but the one I tried asked me to create an account and pay for a subscription after a three day trial.
I got out of an eight-year relationship a little over a year ago, and since then, I have been scrolling the dating apps like I get paid to do it. I find going out and meeting new people fun, and although I don’t usually have a problem coming up with things to say, I decided to see if Rizz could land me a more meaningful date.
Image Source: Rizz
Trying it out was easy. I would find a guy I liked on any number of the dating apps I’m on, take a screenshot of his profile, and then upload it to Rizz. The app would then come up with a witty opening line I could send so that the object of my desire would (hopefully) match with me.
The first thing I noticed with the AI-generated responses is that they all seemed a little, um, sexual – even the opening lines. Maybe I subconsciously had sex on the brain, especially because Rizz claims it uses specialty algorithms to match each person’s individual personality, but it felt like everything the AI was feeding me could be seen as some kind of sexual innuendo. (“Can you handle the heat of my chicken parm?” it wrote. “Chicken parm” means vagina, right?)
Image Source: Rizz
I quickly figured out that there were a bunch of different settings I could toggle through on the interface when asking the app to come up with something for me: a “genuine” reply, a “rizz” reply, an “NSFW” reply, or a “roast” reply. Once the app fed me something to say, I could ask for it to give me something similar but choose to make it funnier, wittier, flirtier, cooler, more romantic, more formal, more poetic, shorter, or longer. Throughout my time testing the app, I found myself consistently pressing the “formal” button after each suggestion, because I didn’t want to sound like I just wanted to bang.
The app also has a feature where it’ll generate pickup lines for you, and those were way too sexual. Maybe I’m just old, but they seemed cheesy and a little gross. I couldn’t see myself sending one, and I don’t think I would respond to someone who sent me any of the options Rizz generated for me – no matter how good-looking (or tall) they were.
Image Source: Rizz
Out of the four guys I tested the app on, one asked me for my number, one stopped responding after four messages, one unmatched me after two days of conversing (I think he thought I was a bot, to be fair), and one asked me out on a date. However, it’s worth noting that the person who asked me out on a date was the one I conversed with the least using the app. We exchanged a total of two messages each before he asked when I was free for drinks. I’m not going to lie, it may have been the bikini photo in my profile that was urging him to ask me out, not my brain-stimulating banter.
Ultimately, I do better on my own, but I do think that the app could be a helpful guide for someone who has a hard time initiating conversations, although I suggest taking the discussion into your own hands after the initial messages. I’m outgoing and pretty funny in person, so when I do eventually go on the date with a guy who asked me out, I’m not concerned about keeping up with the conversation. However, if I were really shy in person, I would be worried about keeping up appearances once I finally met my date in real life.
Although it was fun to experiment, I don’t think I’ll continue using the app in the future unless I need a particularly witty line to slide into someone’s DMs or for an initial message on a dating app. Or if I’m really, really horny.
