Dating app Loverse offers AI-generated partners for married men

The implications for generative AI and porn are manifold, from fully AI-created adult videos to photo books and other content featuring AI “idols” and models.

While the government is keen to use artificial intelligence to boost Japan’s declining marriage rate, the police have already started cracking down on using AI to make “obscene” content.

What about the private sector? There’s a lot of money to be made from AI and companies are developing services to sell to us, including romantic ones.

As long heralded by science fiction (Black Mirror, Her, Blade Runner 2049, inter alia), we may well soon start having serious relationships with AI.

A new dating app hopes to make that happen. Instead of matching users with an actual potential partner, it gives them an AI-generated “wife” or “husband.”

Loverse launched in June 2023 under the initial name of samansa, promising romance with AI “partners.”

The user browses the profiles of these “partners” and sends a like. These partners somehow determine whether to return the like and initiate the matching, after which the pair can exchange messages.

The operator, Samantha (seemingly a reference to the “partner” in the film Her), claims the partners act like humans and have their own daily schedules according to their job, age, and hobbies. This affects how and when they reply to messages to their human counterparts.

The partners are also apparently not able to do “superhuman” things like interact with thousands of users simultaneously.

Both male and female partners are available. When you go to the Loverse website, you can see which partners are currently “online,” much like with a regular dating website or app.

In a recent Asahi Shimbun article, CEO Goki Kusunoki said, “We hope that even those who don’t have the opportunity to fall in love due to their circumstances can experience the feeling of falling in love.”

Registration for Loverse, which has received widespread media attention, is free, with a ¥2,500 monthly plan available.

AI dependency among vulnerable people and the terminally online is a growing issue. Loverse takes steps to prevent this by displaying the reminder “The content is fictitious” below each message from the AI partner. It can also apparently detect messages that encourage self-harm and then recommends users to government consultation services.

Who is actually using this app? Well, according to the operator’s own research, it’s mostly married men in their forties, suggesting the app functions like ersatz infidelity for guys whose romance with their wives is over, feel trapped (due to kids, etc.) in their marriages, and can’t afford and/or don’t want to use sex workers or one of the many services for married people to find lovers. In other words, Loverse offers a vicarious, guilt-free experience of adultery.

This has been in the offing for a while and Japan is, in many ways, a natural environment for a service like Loverse, given its established precedent for digital and virtual idols.

We previously reported on a dating app that uses AI-generated images to create simulations of couples with results that are simultaneously amusing and terrifying. Similarly, a man sold dating advice using an AI-generated female character, but ended up in the slammer for it.