The technology behind ChatGPT has been around for several years without drawing much notice. It was the addition of a chatbot interface that made it so popular. In other words, it wasn't a development in AI per se but a change in how the AI interacted with people that captured the world's attention. Very quickly, people started thinking about ChatGPT as an autonomous social entity. As early as 1996, Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass looked at the personal computers of their time and found that "equating mediated and real life is neither rare nor unreasonable. It is very common, it is easy to foster, it does not depend on fancy media equipment, and thinking will not make it go away."

The technology behind ChatGPT has been around for several years without drawing much notice. It was the addition of a chatbot interface that made it so popular. In other words, it wasn't a development in AI per se but a change in how the AI interacted with people that captured the world's attention. Very quickly, people started thinking about ChatGPT as an autonomous social entity. As early as 1996, Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass looked at the personal computers of their time and found that "equating mediated and real life is neither rare nor unreasonable. It is very common, it is easy to foster, it does not depend on fancy media equipment, and thinking will not make it go away."

Dating used to be about the end result. Its shift to an online business has made it about the journey. That might not be great for the longevity of consumers' relationships, but it should continue to benefit investors' love affair with publicly traded companies like Match Group and Bumble. Match's apps had nearly 100 million collective monthly active users as of the end of the first quarter. Meanwhile, the number of people willing to pay for so-called "freemium" dating apps continues to climb.