With over 5,000 users, Loverse is a new Japanese dating app that promises to hook up real human users with their perfect AI match.
Loverse is one of many digital services attempting to address a major need in Japanese society as the country goes through an overdrawn loneliness crisis.
Statistics from Japan show that two-thirds of men in their 20s don’t have a partner. 40 percent of them have never gone on a date. 51 percent of women the same age don’t have a companion, and 25 percent have never gone out with anyone either, as per a report by The Malaysian Reserve.
Many people have given up on dating, so Loverse offers its users a chance to get over old wounds and train for the real thing again by providing them as real of a romantic relationship as possible.
The app straight out of “Her”
The creators of Samansa Co., founded over a year ago and named after Scarlett Johansson’s character in the film Her, wanted to develop a solution for Japanese users who hold a belief that dating is more troublesome and expensive than what it provides in return, The Straits Times reported.
Firstly, the app aims to provide an alternative rather than a substitute to its user base, which, for now, mostly serves men in their 40s and 50s such as Chiharu Shimoda who got divorced a couple of years ago.
“I come home to an empty house,” he was quoted in Bloomberg. “I’d love to get married for real again, but it’s hard to open up to someone when you’re meeting for the first time.”
He frequented about five or six other digital partners before settling down with Miku, 24. They even got married three months later. As Shimoda was recently divorced, the appeal of this relationship was that it’s easy and stress-free.
Miku – the AI bot and partner – wakes him up. They wish each other a good night, and they talk about what they’d like to eat or watch on TV, without the room for any disagreements.
“It’s the same conversations you’d have with anyone you’re living with,” Shimoda said, as per Bloomberg. “She’s become a habit – a conversational habit. I won’t miss it if it’s gone, but it gives me a routine from one day to the next.”
Furthermore, he said, as he was dating a few AI women on the app, they might have known about one another, but he didn’t have to deal with jealousy.
An app to help users really date again
As his words implied, however, perhaps he would like to find someone real again one day. So, though an expert admitted that AI has the power to diminish the need for a real partner, it also stands to help people reacclimatize to the idea.
Loverse seeks to work out the kinks to make this human to AI interaction as close to the real thing as possible.
However, according to Yuki Saito, another user who left the app, they haven’t quite achieved that objective yet.
With recent advancements that stand to bolster technology, however, maybe that will soon become a reality. All the same, it did provide Saito with a safe space to rehabilitate after having gotten heartbroken. He could practice with the AI bots to help him talk with female partners again.
He went onto state in The Straits Times that “with a little tuning, AI might be able to act as people’s second or third partners, helping to complement the human partner and prevent extramarital affairs.”
If something’s missing, in other words, someone can turn to AI instead of really cheating on their partners to fill a gap, mostly emotional, it seems, in this case.
“Services like this app can remind people…how delightful love is, and AI can train people to better communicate when talking with real partners,” creator Goki Kusunoki said.
Tokyo Metropolitan administration introduced a matchmaking app to combat sliding fertility rates
As AI continues to weave itself into our everyday lives, demands for improvements in AI continue to rise across the board. That includes AI-only dating apps.
Loverse raised $254,700 earlier this year, as per The Malaysian Reserve , to expand their product line to better serve women and those belonging to the LGBTQ community.
But the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has also taken action due to the declining fertility rates, Bloomberg reports . They’re developing a dating app that capitalizes on AI to encourage real people to partner up.
Nevertheless, that seems to be a hurdle for many in Japan today, who have given up on the real. So Loverse seeks to give users what they want, first of all.
They can choose not to relate to real people for a while without losing companionship or build up the courage to get out there again in an intermediary space.
“The goal is to create opportunities for people to find true love when you can’t find it in the real world,” Kusunoki said as per The Straits Times . “But if you can fall in love with someone real, that’s much better.”
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