With the rise of AI tools, scams and catfishing have become easier than ever. From cloning voices to creating fake identities, technology has reached a point where it’s difficult to tell what’s real and what’s not. And dating apps, where people are often at their most emotionally vulnerable, are quickly becoming a hotspot for such experiments.
A Bengaluru-based man decided to conduct a “social experiment” using OpenAI’s latest image generation tool, GPT-4o. Out of boredom and curiosity, he used the tool to create hyper-realistic images of a fictional woman. He then uploaded those images to Bumble and created a fake dating profile.
I got bored and decided to play with ChatGPT’s new 4o image generation tool. Made some super realistic AI-generated pics of a girl. Then came the evil idea:
“Why not make a Bumble profile in Bangalore with it?”, and then…— infinoz🎧(42%) (@infinozz) April 14, 2025
Within just two hours, the profile had received over 2,750 likes, a flood of super swipes, and a tsunami of compliments. Men were not just swiping right, they were going out of their way to impress her, offering ice creams, concert tickets, and heartfelt messages.
Within 2 hours i got 2750+ Likes, hundreds of superswipes, compliments & Paragraph long compliments, my phone literally had a seizure, tun tun tun tun every second
— infinoz🎧(42%) (@infinozz) April 14, 2025
Although Bumble eventually removed the fake profile after about 12 hours, the point had already been made. The man claimed his experiment exposed just how emotionally vulnerable men are on dating apps and how powerful AI has become in manipulating human emotions.
lowkey scary tho
imagine if I actually matched someone and got them to send food, gifts, or pay rent lmao.
People out here SIMPING for pixels.anyways, ai is powerful & men are lonely. (attaching images for reference) pic.twitter.com/ihG9x0lxdW
— infinoz🎧(42%) (@infinozz) April 14, 2025
People online were deeply disturbed, pointing out how easy it was to fool platforms like Bumble and create completely fake identities. There is also this question of whether this is ethically right, as it takes catfishing to the next level.
This is why I don’t browse of bumble…have turned on verified only profiles and only looked at the “liked me” section.
— Mr. Nite (@ArmyOfRobots) April 15, 2025
Other countries : Let’s use AI TO improve productivity,build startups and ideas
Meanwhile india:👀
— Ash (@ashhwhiz) April 15, 2025
Gosh this is scary
I can see heavy adoption of its varients.
— Mehul (@MehulCodes) April 15, 2025
Makes me wonder how much power does women have on dating apps
— Shujath (@_Shujath) April 16, 2025
ethically shaky, technically wild. feels like catfishing 2.0 meets a Black Mirror pilot.
— Cheeku Tripathi (@kaush_trip) April 15, 2025
I am more concerned about the fact that how easy it is to fool these platforms and make accounts out of anything
— Shagun Damadia❤️ (@shagun_damadia) April 15, 2025
Tried it last year in jaipur, got 5k likes. Never made actual account post that experiment lol
— Realacc (@dakorosensei) April 15, 2025
What are your views on this incident?