When algorithms run our relationships

By the time Carrie Bradshaw finished wondering whether we could ever truly know a man, the rest of us were already trying to decode an algorithm.

In the late 1990s, "Sex and the City" turned brunch into a confessional and dating into a contact sport. In a pre-swipe civilization, romance required courage, heels, and the emotional resilience to survive a landline answering machine. Today, somewhere between a push notification and a predictive text, love has been quietly outsourced to artificial intelligence. If Carrie were writing her column in 2026, she might not ask whether Mr. Big is emotionally available. She would ask whether his chatbot is.

Welcome to Techville, where desire meets data and Cupid has a coding bootcamp certificate.

The rise of AI-powered dating apps has been so swift that even our grandmothers are wondering what happened to handwritten love letters. In their place: machine-learning models trained on terabytes of flirtation. These apps promise optimized compatibility, real-time seduction tips, and, if you upgrade to premium, a “deep emotional simulation mode.” For a monthly fee, you can now receive affection calibrated to your attachment style.

It’s difficult not to admire the efficiency. After all, what is romance if not a series of poorly managed expectations? AI offers to manage them for you. It suggests when to text back (“not too eager, but not too aloof”), analyzes your date’s micro-expressions via uploaded selfies, and composes apologies that sound vaguely poetic but legally safe.

And yet, as in all great comedies, the punchline arrives uninvited.

Take Javier from Techville’s financial district. Tired of ghosting, he subscribed to an AI wingman app that promised to “maximize emotional ROI.” The algorithm instructed him to compliment his date’s “unique cognitive aura.” He did. She blinked twice and asked whether he was feeling well. The app later explained that the phrase tested well in beta trials among philosophy majors in Helsinki.

Then there’s Amira, who used an AI intimacy simulator during a dry spell. The chatbot was attentive, witty, and never forgot her coffee order. It quoted Rumi at midnight and reminded her to hydrate. After three weeks, she confessed she preferred the bot to her last three human relationships. “At least it updates,” she said.

We laugh, but there’s something quietly unsettling about it all. The philosopher Martin Buber once wrote, “All real living is meeting.” But what happens when the meeting is mediated by code? Are we still encountering another soul, or merely a well-trained mirror?

The companies behind these apps argue that AI democratizes intimacy. Shy individuals gain confidence. Long-distance couples maintain connection. People with disabilities explore desire without stigma. There is truth in this optimism. Technology has always expanded the borders of possibility. The printing press spread ideas; the smartphone spread attention spans thin.

But AI spreads something more delicate: emotional labor.

The trouble is not that AI participates in our romantic lives. The trouble begins when it replaces participation with prediction.

Rafael Hernandez de Santiago

Here lies the irony. In our quest to perfect communication, we risk perfecting its absence. The messiness of love — awkward pauses, misinterpreted jokes, the courage to say the wrong thing — cannot be beta-tested. It is precisely in our imperfection that intimacy takes root.

The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre warned: “Hell is other people.” If he were alive today, he might add: “Heaven is a well-configured chatbot.” No judgment. A chatbot never forgets your birthday, never leaves the toilet seat up, and never develops an inexplicable passion for cryptocurrency.

And yet. There is a quiet heroism in human unpredictability. An AI can simulate jealousy, but it cannot feel the sting of it. It can generate flirtation, but it does not risk rejection. It can optimize desire, but it does not tremble before it.

The new generation of these dating apps goes even further. They promise hyper-personalized virtual companions rendered in augmented reality. You can design their voice, their humor, even their political opinions. In other words, you can finally date someone who agrees with you about everything. Philosophers have long debated the nature of the ideal partner. Silicon Valley has decided the answer is: customizable.

But if love becomes a product, does it remain a mystery?

The trouble is not that AI participates in our romantic lives. The trouble begins when it replaces participation with prediction. When an app tells you who to love, how to love, and when to send a heart emoji, the ancient adventure of courtship becomes a guided tour.

And maybe that is the final irony in Techville’s romance with AI. We use machines to avoid heartbreak, only to discover that heartbreak was proof we were alive. We design apps to guarantee satisfaction, only to realize that longing is what made satisfaction meaningful.

If Carrie were here today, typing on a luminous tablet instead of a laptop, she might conclude: perhaps the question is not whether AI will change love. It already has. The question is whether we will still dare to love without it.

In the end, even in Techville, the most revolutionary act may be the simplest one: to risk saying something unscripted, unoptimized, and gloriously human.

After all, no app, however intelligent, has yet learned how to blush.

• Rafael Hernandez de Santiago, viscount of Espes, is a Spanish national residing in Saudi Arabia and working at the Gulf Research Center.