Hinge’s AI Won’t Fix Modern Dating - Because the that System is Broken

By Dr. Michael Conner

An ethical and morally governed dating app designed to help you find lasting relationship in 3 months won’t make that business rich.

The public is finally seeing the problem with dating apps.

People are burned out, lonelier than ever, and increasingly vocal about the psychological toll of modern dating. In response, companies like Hinge have rolled out AI “dating coaches” to help users sound more confident, write better openers, and reduce friction in conversations.

This is being framed as progress. It isn’t.

AI coaching doesn’t address the real harm people are experiencing. It simply helps them endure a broken system longer.

The core problem with modern dating isn’t that people don’t know what to say. It’s that dating has been structured as a competitive marketplace built on scarcity, comparison, and emotional disposability. No amount of AI polish can fix that.

Hinge’s new AI tools don’t impersonate users or send messages autonomously. Although you can already do that by pasting your messages into ChatGpT. Chat is very good at keeping people interested in responding. Without question, Chat know how to romance a man or woman.

Hinge gives their members final editing control. Otherwise Hinge would be on the hook for harm and damages follow. But let’s be clear about what this model actually does: it helps users perform better inside a system that is already causing harm and damage member’s mental health.

The use of AI is not repair. It is optimization to keep member paying monthly subscriptions by bolstering hope.

People aren’t complaining because they lack clever openers. They’re complaining about exhaustion, loss of self-worth, anxiety, distrust, and a sense of being treated like products rather than people. Many report dating-related depression, heightened anxiety, and even physical safety concerns. These are not messaging problems. They are virtual environmental ones.

Reducing the sting of rejection is not the same as reducing psychological harm. Helping someone cope inside a harmful system is not the same as changing the system.

In fact, the very existence of AI dating coaches should raise a more uncomfortable question:

If users need algorithmic assistance to create enough confidence just to participate, what does that say about the environment itself?

A healthy relational ecosystem doesn’t require technological prosthetics to preserve basic self-worth.

Dating apps didn’t accidentally create these conditions. Scarcity, endless choice, comparison, and intermittent reinforcement are not bugs. They are the business model. Engagement depends on dissatisfaction.

Hinge’s revenue depends on prolonged searching. The longer people stay single, the more valuable they are.

Hinge’s mission to generate profit and help people find lasting relationship is fundamental conflict of interest.

An online dating system that profits from loneliness cannot be trusted to heal it.

This is why cosmetic fixes fall short. AI coaching may slightly improve response rates or reduce awkward silences, but it leaves untouched the deeper drivers of harm: lack of safety, lack of accountability, lack of context, and incentives that reward attention over attachment.

Contrast this with a different approach—one that starts not with performance, but with protection.

Bend Dating, a small experimental platform, was built on a simple but radical premise: if dating environments are harming people, the ethical response is to redesign the environment, not train people to tolerate it. That means detailed profiles instead of snap judgments, psychological compatibility rather than superficial matching, mental health screening and referrals, background checks, and access to certified coaches and licensed clinicians. It even includes optional polygraphs—not for surveillance, but to establish seriousness and accountability.

This isn’t about being “premium.” It’s about being honest about risk.

Safety, trust, and accountability must exist before connection, not after harm occurs. You can’t AI-edit your way out of unsafe dating. You can’t copywrite your way into trust.

Where mainstream apps optimize engagement, Bend Dating optimizes conditions for real connection. Where AI coaches teach people how to play the game better, Bend Dating asks why the game exists at all.

This difference matters because it reframes what “help” actually means. Hinge’s AI offers symptom relief. Bend Dating aims at prevention and repair. One reduces friction; the other reduces injury.

None of this requires demonizing technology. The question isn’t whether AI can be useful—it’s what kind of system it’s serving. Technology that reinforces exploitative incentives will inevitably amplify harm, no matter how polished its interface.

Dating doesn’t need better scripts. It needs better ethics.

If we’re serious about addressing the psychological and physical harms people are naming, we have to stop pretending that confidence coaching is care. We have to stop mistaking engagement metrics for well-being. And we have to be willing to say out loud what many users already know intuitively: the system is broken.

AI can help people survive that system a little longer.
Or we can build something better.

No games.

No bullshit.

No joke.