‘Good Bot, Bad Bot’: Episode V #nigeria | #nigeriascams | #lovescams

Find the original episode and a full transcript here.

Bots are everywhere. They’re all over social media platforms, chatrooms, phone apps. These pieces of software — which are meant to imitate human behavior and language — influence our daily lives in sneaky, surprising ways.

In the fifth episode of Endless Thread‘s series “Good Bot, Bad Bot,” co-hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Nora Saks dive into the ways artificial intelligence is changing modern love and online dating. Trying to find love (or even lock in one date) on dating apps is no easy task, especially with the onslaught of fake accounts and catfishing scams.

But what if you had a digital dating coach installed right in your phone’s keyboard — an AI Cyrano de Bergerac or Alex “Hitch” Hitchens — to automatically generate a perfectly crafted, personalized message for every conversation? Not just openers to get the conversation started, but witty, flirty banter to keep it going?

As Endless Thread producer Nora Saks reports, lots of companies are developing apps that use AI-generated communication to optimize users’ love lives and connections  — online and off. Nora and co-host Ben Brock Johnson talk to the founder of one such start-up, as well as a dating app researcher, and single friends to probe the pros and cons of having an AI wingman in your pocket.