Two-sided receptivity to conversational AI agents in online dating: Bilingual survey data from Fledge.Love

New research from arXiv, utilizing survey data from the international dating platform Fledge.Love, investigates user attitudes towards autonomous conversational AI agents within online dating. The study addresses a gap in public evidence regarding how users react when encountering machine-generated profiles, messages, or conversation partners, distinguishing between deploying one's own AI agent and interacting with another user's AI.

Why it matters

The rapid deployment of AI in user-facing platforms, particularly in sensitive domains like online dating, necessitates a clear understanding of user perception and receptivity. This research provides critical insights into how users react to machine-generated interactions, informing strategic decisions on AI integration, user experience design, and trust building.

Key insights

• Autonomous conversational agents and generative-AI features are being rapidly integrated into online dating platforms.
• There is a scarcity of public evidence concerning user attitudes towards these AI features, particularly from the receiving side.
• The research focuses on user receptivity when encountering machine-generated content (profiles, messages, conversation partners) from others.
• The study differentiates between user receptivity to deploying one's own AI agent versus encountering another user's AI agent.
• Two anonymized survey datasets (N=2,617, Russian and English forms) were collected from active international users of Fledge.Love to measure receptivity.

Source

arXiv — Computers and Society — https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19545