By Nehru Odeh
A Russian man Aleksander Zhadan has made use of Artificial Intelligence, AI, to find his wife, Karina Vyalshakaeva. Instead of going through the tedious process of actually interacting with women, the Moscow resident programmed OpenAI’s GPT large language models to talk to 5, 239 women on his behalf.
The 23- year-old Russian who had not been in love reduced the 5239 women down to just one, his “AI-endorsed soulmate” Vyalshakaeva.
However, he said that he began his AI search after his previous girlfriend ended their relationship he turned to Tinder which he found was a “dead end”.
Zhadan achieved that feat by developing a system that filtered out any woman posing with alcohol, had posted explicit photos or whose profiles included zodiac signs, Gizmodo reports.
And his efforts appear to have paid off, as he has found his wife Vyalshakaeva, in apparent proof that his bizarre and extremely 2024 method of finding love in the age of AI can actually work.
The pair first matched in December 2022. Unbeknownst to Vyalshakaeva, she was actually chatting with an AI for the first few months into their relationship, according to Gizmodo. Gradually, Zhadan took over for his AI Romeo, and the two started seeing each other in person.
When Vyalshakaeva realized that all that while she had been chatting with ChatGPT, and not a human, she wasn’t angry but “just shocked”.
Still, Zhadan says it wasn’t even his idea to eventually get married. “At some point, the project wrote me a recommendation that maybe it’s time to propose to Karina,” he told Gizmodo.
“Karina said she wanted to go to a wedding, but ChatGPT thought she’d prefer attending her own,” he added. “I took the advice, and she said yes.”
When Gizmodo asked about Zhadan’s unconventional way of dating, Vyalshakaeva had an interesting answer.
“He spent a lot of time personalizing these prompts so, for me, it’s okay when used in a rational way,” she said.
According to the pair, it’s the real deal.
“I think the most important thing is our real-life connection, which is great,” Vyalshakaeva told Gizmodo.