Marissa, a 31-year-old Boston resident, downloaded dating apps because she is looking for love. But more and more, she finds herself looking for something else: AI-free photos.

The marketing professional said she routinely comes across dating app profiles that appear to be digitally altered. Usually, the changes are minor and can be easily made using tools like Photoshop, such as editing someone out of a photo. Sometimes, however, the photo appears to be completely AI-generated, she told CBS News, citing a photo she came across on Bumble of a man dressed in a suit tiling a bathroom wall. 

“AI aside, I’m not sure what the appeal is there,” she said (Marissa asked to withhold her surname for privacy reasons).

Numerous women on TikTok also report spotting photos of men on dating apps that appear to be AI-generated. Their accounts demonstrate how AI is blurring the line between what’s real and what’s fake in the already fraught arena of online dating. They also raise ethical questions about how far is too far when it comes to manipulating your online persona.

“People want authentic connections and conversations,” Kathryn Coduto, an assistant professor at Boston University who studies dating apps, told CBS News in an email. “I think AI has made people more wary and skeptical of others, especially people they don’t know.”

Of course, dating app users have long relied on filters and other editing tools to polish their photos. But AI tools are upping the ante, allowing people to create high-quality images within seconds, and in some cases, fabricate fake scenes. 

“A dater has to think about how they’re going to capture someone’s attention in a few seconds or less,” Coduto told CBS News. “This might mean making your photo look a little better than it might have before.”

To be sure, this practice isn’t exclusive to men. However, they appear more likely to use AI to spruce up their dating profiles than women, Coduto added.

“So far, men are more interested in AI in the dating space, which isn’t surprising,” Coduto said. “Women tend to receive more matches and messages, so men have a harder time standing out.”

The “digital stylist” who helps men AI their photos

AI can create obvious distortions when it generates photos, such as omitting a finger from someone’s hand. For Marissa, a telltale sign is the person’s face, which sometimes looks “waxy” in AI-generated photos, she said. 

Still, as technology improves, it’s becoming harder to distinguish a real photo from one created by AI models. 

Lana Li, a Brooklyn, New York, dating consultant who runs the Substack “Love Me Like a Robot,” calls herself a “digital stylist.” She uses AI to help men level up their dating app photos, and defends using the technology as long as the photos still genuinely represent who they are. 

“I can take a picture of somebody and then put them in a different outfit or change their hairstyle a little bit, or put different shoes on them,” she told CBS News. “Or if I think their body language doesn’t look confident in the picture, I will have [ChatGPT] change that.”

The 37-year-old also uses FaceApp to change men’s facial expressions. She said the edits are subtle, such as slightly lifting the corner of someone’s mouth to make them look “friendlier.”

Despite her liberal approach to using AI, there are lines Li is unwilling to cross. For example, one client asked her to digitally alter a photo so that his head was on a marathon runner’s body — a request she declined.

“I told him, ‘I can’t work with you if you want to not represent yourself accurately,'” she said.

Two men who spoke to CBS News on the condition of anonymity to maintain their privacy told CBS News they’ve used AI in their online dating photos, but in ways they feel stop short of being misleading and remain true to who they are.

A ban on Hinge

One man, a 30-year-old tech employee and client of Li’s, said she used ChatGPT to digitally clothe him in more professional garb and to tame his frizzy hair.

“It’s very subtle,” the New York City resident said, saying he still looked like himself, even with the edits. He emphasized that he doesn’t want to “catfish” anyone — a concern for singles even in the absence of AI.

Another man is pulling back after one of his AI photos backfired. The 50-something-year-old New York City resident said he fed photos of himself into Aragon.ai, an AI headshot generator, which produced a picture of him standing on a Manhattan roof with a sunset in the background. It immediately drew hits on his Hinge profile.

“This picture generally got the most likes,” he told CBS News. “Now that could just be because it was the first thing they saw. But regardless, it was proving to be effective, and women seemed to like it.”

That was, until Hinge banned him. He managed to get his account back but ultimately decided to delete the sunset photo, suspecting it was the reason for his removal from the app.

“How much AI am I OK with?”

Most popular dating apps have policies that limit the use of AI-generated images in people’s profiles. Hinge emphasizes the importance of authenticity on its website, noting that people should be able to discern “fact from fiction.”

“If you decide to include generative AI images, audio, or video in your profile, it should not be used to misrepresent yourself or your intentions,” the company says on its AI policy page.

Hinge also uses automated tools and human reviewers to detect and remove “prohibited material,” according to the company’s terms of service. If users see suspicious AI material, they can confidentially report it through the app or online. 

A spokesperson for Match Group, which owns Hinge, Tinder and a handful of other dating apps, told CBS that as generative AI evolves, the company is “watching closely and listening to daters, who tell us they want more transparency, more authenticity, and more confidence that a real person is on the other end.”

Bumble also uses tools to detect and weed out AI-generated content, and lets users report profiles that feature such images. A spokesperson said the company prohibits inauthentic profiles, and Bumble’s community guidelines bar the use of “artificially generated photos or enhanced photos to deceive others.”

“We enforce this through a combination of AI-powered tools, human moderation, verification features and member reporting, and we take action based on the severity of a violation, up to and including permanently banning accounts,” the spokesperson said. 

Marissa, the 31-year-old who lives in Boston, said that when she sees a person’s profile whose photos bear the hallmarks of AI, she chooses to move along. 

“The dating pool is already challenging, and this is just another thing we have to grapple with,” she said. “How much AI am I OK with?”