Dating Over 50: Are You Being Chat-Fished? 3 AI Traps That Kill Real Connections!

This goes beyond scamming
 This goes this is about real connection
 Are you talking with someone who’s representing their their real self? Thank you so much for joining us again on Second Act TV
 Once again, I’m so happy to welcome back Sandy Weiner, the founder of Last First Date and the author of Choice Points and Dating and Love at Last
 Sandy, thank you so much for being here again
 Thank you for having me back as always, Silka
 Sandy, today’s conversation, I can’t wait to just dive into this chat fishing, [snorts] [laughter] another great new dating term that we absolutely need to know about
 I mean, we’re hearing so much about AI now
 It’s just overtaking just about every part of our life, including our dating life
 And what I want to talk about is the three biggest mistakes that we need to be aware of
 So what are the three big mistakes using AI that can actually keep us from real connection? And mistake number one, letting AI do the talking
 What does that mean, Sandy? Yeah, people use AI to message, to flirt, and you know, it can be dangerous because if you let AI do all the talking and all the flirting, it’s not really you
 It’s a digital version of you and you can’t keep that up in real life
 So, it’s not your voice
 Well, for someone who really hasn’t necessarily been on the dating app or is not familiar with this, you know, what how how does that work? I mean, I guess you get online and then you start texting
 That’s how a conversation is started
 I think for the most part, people would go on to an app like chat GPT and they would say, “How do I send an opening message or how do I respond to this message?” And sometimes it can be good and most of the time it just sounds like somebody else
 So, people don’t even trust their own voice anymore
 I know people who will check with chat GPT for any kind of writing that they do and sometimes again it can help and sometimes it’s just overly positive and it doesn’t sound real and we have to be careful of that
 I mean, chat GPT is something that I know you and I we we use it on a daily basis to to help with ideas and and that sort of thing
 And that that’s a good thing, but we don’t let it overtake our voice
 And I think that’s the danger with the dating apps
 And the more and more I learn about this is that the dating sites are literally integrating this into their platform to where it makes it really easy to to use this
 Again, I haven’t actually done it and I’d love to hear from our viewers if you have done this, if you like it
 Is it helpful? Is it annoying? Because it’s it it is one heck [laughter] of a tool as long as it doesn’t misrepresent you
 It it can help, but like you said, don’t let it just be the voice
 You have to go in and edit that to make it sound like you
 This is just a a start
 It’s an outline
 It’s a it’s an idea
 It’s not you
 So, so mistake number two and that follows mistake number one here is ignoring red flags because the conversation feels so so real
 Yeah, we can get taken in by the empathy of artificial intelligence
 You know, I I have a I know people who will write to chat GPT and say, um, this person just ghosted me
 how should I feel? Basically, give me some support
 And they’ll say, “Oh my god, you’re the you’re the most amazing person in the whole world
 You deserve somebody who’s incredible
” Like that
 That’s the way Chat GPT speaks to us
 They’ll always tell us that we’re the best and we’re incredible
 So, you know, if if somebody is speaking like that and telling you that about yourself because they’re using an AI tool, we’re thinking, “Oh my god, they really get me
” You know, all the people who have gotten taken in by a scammer who was a robot know that it’s so easy to fall for somebody who just mirrors your tone, who can pick up on the words that are meaningful to you in your profile and say exactly what you need to hear
 We actually have given or at least I in some segments, I think you and I have talked about it
 One way to make somebody comfortable in a first date or in a convers in a conversation is to mirror their style, but but then we’re in person already where, you know, we have a a human connection
 We’re not doing this on paper
 So, to your point, it’s super effective
 It’s super effective when somebody does this
 And I suppose, yeah, you you do you overlook that this might be not even necessarily a scammer
 And I want to keep emphasizing this because this goes beyond scamming
 This goes this is about real connection
 Are you talking with someone who’s representing their their real self? I think that’s that’s really the gist of this this whole segment
 So mistake number three, and some of this just totally blew me away, and I’ll again interested in what you have to say about it
 overediting your profile with AI, including your pictures
 Yeah
 So, there’s a fine line between improving your profile, which most people need help with, and misrepresenting who you are
 So, if your profile looks like it was written by somebody else because it was and um it doesn’t sound like you, you know, like even when I help a client with messaging, for example, and they’ll say, “I don’t know how to message this person
” I will give them some language, but I say, “Please use your own words
 I don’t want me to be writing to them
 I just want to give them an idea about the structure of a good response
” And so AI can make us look like we’re amazing
 And usually, you know, when you read a profile and it looks like this person was just the most amazing person in the whole world and they had they hired a PR firm to write their profile for them
 It just feels too much
 Like most people’s writing is not perfect and that’s actually what makes them human
 But the other issue is the photos like you mentioned and there’s so many issues with photos today and you know we see it on social media
 We see it everywhere and it’s like you meet the person and they look nothing like their photo which is always dangerous
 Yeah
 This is a huge problem and we’ve I mean we’ve talked about uh you know photos for years you know because let’s face it online dating at the first thing you see is a photo
 That’s why photos are so important
 And with AI, you know, it’s making it easier and easier to enhance your photos
 And that’s really that’s a key word
 Are you enhancing or are you is it just not even you anymore? And I want to go through some of the specifics because I again it just some of this just blew me away
 One of the things here what they what they can do with the apps is face refinement
 So, and and it’s automatic face refinement, as they say here
 Subtle retouching, brightening the skin, fixing the lighting, making your teeth a little wider
 If it’s not going to alter your appearance, that’s fine
 But I was shocked to know that that the apps are doing this sometimes without our permission
 So, you may load a photo and you go, “Wow, I look really good
 [laughter] I didn’t know my teeth got whiter with that new toothpaste I’ve been using
 I thought it would take a lot longer, you know, and I think that it’s okay to make yourself look a little better, you know, people do it on Zoom, you know, make my appearance look a little better, but then when you meet in person, you don’t want to be like, “Oh my god, I thought you had zero wrinkles and your teeth were white, but they’re really yellow
” And you just don’t want to enhance too much
 Incidentally, I don’t use any zoom filters
 I I just want people to know that I have it all the way to zero
 [laughter] If I if I ever look good, then it’s because of the lighting
 Yeah
 And I’m really a man
 So [laughter] [laughter] to wrap this point up, it is and and you mentioned this apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge actually integrate these filters according to the research
 I guess we would have to verify that, but to optimize lighting and and and the whitening of the teeth and all that without us knowing it
 And you know, again, we we we preach have good photos, have good lighting, etc
, etc
 So, if we can clean it up a little bit, that’s not a bad thing, but not to the point of where it doesn’t doesn’t represent you
 Yeah
 Here’s here’s where where we get to the not representing you
 Number two, here beauty filters
 the AI beauty filters and there are age reduction tools and we’re not promoting [laughter] this not [clears throat] for online dating
 What does it do? Some apps use AI beautifification models
 I’m going to read this here so I get it right
 that guess your age and make subtle adjustments such as tightening skin, lifting features, reducing wrinkles, and there there’s third-party tools that you would use
 So, you do know that you’re doing this
 This is no longer the apps, you know, just automatically making you look better
 But they are working on linking them directly to make this easier
 It’s one thing to get a facelift
 It’s another thing to just use a tool to erase your wrinkles and erase what you really look like
 So, it’s there’s nothing more shocking than meeting a person for the first time and you can’t even recognize them
 You know, people even post in their profiles no filters
 Like, do not post a photo with filters
 I will not date you
 You know, again, why would you do that? Because you do ultimately need to meet up
 So it it’s it’s it’s feudal
 It’s feudal to do this
 Another one that’s interesting it is uh background editing an a like replacing or enhancing a background a a cluttered background
 That’s kind of cool again if you have some good pictures of you but you know it’s not why not you know clean up the background as long as you don’t give somebody the impression you’re traveling the world and you’re in your kitchen right
 Yeah
 So definitely, you know, try to take pictures without cluttered backgrounds and messes or in the bathroom as so many people do
 That’s also helpful
 Like if you’re taking a picture with other people and you want to take them out of the photo instead of putting like a giant smiley face over your child, you can enhance it by taking the kid out of the photo
 If that works, that would be a better option, I think
 Well, and the worst way there, they actually I guess there’s full makeover is what they’re saying
 And again, not promoting this in any way, shape, or form
 Could be fun to play with for personal use, but apparently you can upload like 10 images, even selfies
 And and a II will just create all these these photos
 Don’t don’t ever think about using that for dating
 I mean, you’re just setting yourself up for horrible disappointment
 Absolutely
 I mean, people do it for profile photos, for LinkedIn, you know, for work photos
 They’ll put a selfie up and they’ll get like some professional photo
 You know, again, if it looks like you, great
 If it doesn’t look like you and it looks like 20-year-old 20 years ago you, then don’t do it
 Well, to give our viewers some actionable advice
 So, now you’re you’re, you know, you’re online dating, you’re wondering, am I talking to a bot? Is this real? And again, I don’t necessarily even want to focus on the scammers, but just the people who are just misrepresenting
 and it’s not going to lead to a connection
 H how do we prevent ourselves from getting catfished? And here are three easy chatfish checks that I’d like you to explain to our viewers
 One is the detail test
 What is that? Yeah, try to get details instead of generic uh answers because chat GPT will give you generic unless you load it with some details
 So asking what’s your favorite coffee shop near you? You know, if they send you back a message saying there’s this really cozy cafe on a certain street and you know they make great white flat latte or whatever
 You know, just the details are going to tell you this is a person and not a bot
 Yeah
 And this is something probably to very early on do if you’re suspecting at all
 You know, is this conversation flowing too easy like we talked about earlier? Yeah
 Get into the details
 This is interesting to the emotion test
 What do they mean by that? Yeah
 So, you know, chat can give some sense of emotion, but not true empathy, not true sense of humor
 It’s about the feelings
 So, you don’t want everything to be overly polite or overly um you’re amazing kind of thing
 So those are like emotionally flat, scripted
 You want to try to get a sense of the person’s sense of humor
 I was chatting recently with somebody and he mentioned something like the the last test is chemistry
 And so I mentioned chemistry plus something else equals the golden ticket
 And he wrote, “Oh, that sounds like a Willy Wonka reference
 I’ve never seen the movie
” I mean, that was him
 him was his real life, but he knew the reference and that’s obviously not a bot
 And then uh ultimately the ultimate test uh the off app test if if they don’t get off the conversation
 Well, you you definitely want to meet as soon as possible
 I mean, I just spoke to a client this morning and he said it’s been hard for him to meet up with women because he doesn’t always have coverage for his child
 And I said, ‘Well, do a video chat
 You know, those are vibe checks
 So, you’re getting off the app
 You’re actually speaking to somebody and not just keeping them on the app because you can’t meet them yet
 This way, you’ll see is the is the conversation that they’re having with me on the app, continuing in a chat, whether it’s by video, by phone, or meeting in person, which is it’s the ultimate
 Well, and video chats, uh, most dating coaches, I think, recommend that is, yeah, right then you see if it’s a real person or not
 Other other than like you because you’re a man, but so there are things that [laughter] Anyway, Sandy, how what how do you clo how do we get out of this segment? [laughter] So, I think the bottom line is don’t be afraid of AI
 I I personally use it, you use it
 I think it’s a really helpful tool just like anything else
 Many tools are fantastic if you use them carefully and if you use them in a way that enhances who you are but doesn’t make it a substitute for who you are
 You know, you still have to have your own voice
 You still have to do editing
 Don’t overdo anything
 Um because ultimately it’s going to be the test of meeting and how you get along in person
 You know, you don’t have your little chat in your ear the whole time on a date
 And maybe that will be the future
 Who knows? Also, I think we can learn, we can stop trusting ourselves that we have the ability to be charming and witty and you know, fun to be with because we rely so much on all the enhancements
 So I want to encourage everybody to trust themselves to know that you’re smart enough, you’re witty enough, you don’t have to be brilliant to connect, but you do have to be authentic
 Yeah, that that’s the ex absolutely in my opinion the bottom line that word discourages connection, which is why we started this conversation is you you you’re so far into being something that you’re not that you either become reliant on it or you’re totally I mean it’s just it’s you you’ve prevented the connection once you actually meet
 So, don’t let that happen
 Anyway, I’m really interested in the comments that we get today
 And one thing that AI still has not replaced to date are real life dating coaches like Sandy
 [laughter] So, if you have more questions about this topic, give Sandy a call
 All of her contact information is is below in the show notes and and her books
 Don’t forget the books love ad last which gives you that encouragement that yes it is possible
 Read about all the real life couples Sandy interviewed and of course choice points in dating
 So Sandy thank you so much again
 I look forward to our next conversation on Second Act TV
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