Like something straight out of a sci-fi movie, a Japanese dating app with a difference is hooking people up with their perfect partner – created by artificial intelligence (AI).
Users are reportedly turning to the “safe space” of Samansa Co.’s Loverse to repair their confidence after difficult divorces, to get over broken hearts, to try out different partners without the fear of jealousy and even to learn how to interact in a romantic partnership. One, quoted by Bloomberg, has gone so far as to marry his AI partner.
“Services like this app can remind people…how delightful love is, and AI can train people to better communicate when talking with real partners,” the app’s creator Goki Kusunoki said, adding that “if you can fall in love with someone real, that’s much better” but pointing out that the app creates “opportunities for people to find true love when you can’t find it in the real world.”
With 5000 subscribers and more than a quarter of a million dollars of capital raised, it seems the app is meeting a real need.
40% of Japanese men have never been on a date
Created around a year ago and bearing the name of the AI love interest Scarlett Johanssen played in the film Her, the Samansa Co app provides users with a love match built with AI. The idea, the app’s creators say, is not to replace IRL human interaction but to forge a bridge between what are seen as islands of loneliness in Japanese society.
Effectively the app is a stepping stone to real companionship perhaps, for the two-thirds of Japanese men and over half of Japanese women in their 20s who do not have a partner. 40% and 25% of them respectively have never set foot on a real date, reports The Malaysian Reserve.
Demographic crisis
Those figures are just part of a demographic crisis gripping Japan, where birth rates are at a historic low. One of the most expensive places in the world to raise a child, it is a nation described by its own premier Fumio Kishido last year as “on the cusp of whether it can maintain its societal functions.”
The situation is so grave that even the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is getting in on the game. It too has been developing a dating app with on-board AI but with the aim of “shipping” real people into love matches, using AI to filter out non-genuine singles. It’s all part of a marriage promotion scheme allocated 500 million yen (US$3.23 million) over two years.
