Gen Z dating apps like Ditto ditch swiping in favor of AI matchmaking

Gen Z twenty-somethings are so disillusioned with swipe-based dating apps that they will try almost anything else — even an AI matchmaker. TechCrunch's August 6 feature on Ditto, a college dating service, shows how far the pendulum has swung: no swiping at all, with an AI chatbot handling matching and scheduling real-world dates.

Ditto was founded by Allen Wang and Eric Liu after they dropped out of UC Berkeley. As Gen Z themselves, they witnessed firsthand the behavioral shift in how people are connecting, Wang told TechCrunch, noting that people are tired of endless swiping and small talk and are looking for something more genuine in real life.

Signing up is lightweight: college students text an iMessage number with a code, and an AI chatbot introduces itself as Ditto, a dating initiative built by college students who get it, with no swiping, no awkward DMs, and just real dates every Wednesday at 7 pm. Users then text through an onboarding flow covering basics like name, gender, and birth date, followed by personality, interests, and dating preferences; some even upload photos of celebrity crushes to give the AI a sense of their type.

Unlike the familiar similar-hobbies logic, Ditto's algorithm tries to match people based on what their interests say about who they are. As Wang put it, a guy into rock climbing and outdoor sports and a girl into hip hop and skateboarding look dissimilar on the surface, but both are adventurous and individualistic underneath — chemistry is actually predictable with the right signals.

Every Wednesday at 7 pm, Ditto messages users with their match for the week, including a person, a time, and a location. Users just show up, go on the date, and report back; Ditto collects the feedback, refines its understanding of each user, and sends them to a better next date.

The numbers so far: 150,000 signups, and Wang says roughly 20% of matches connected through Ditto end up going on a date. Ditto also generates collage-style graphics introducing each pair and explaining why they might be a good fit — an aesthetic popular among Gen Z.

Safety is the open question in any model that compresses the time between matching and meeting. For now Ditto operates at only a few dozen colleges, and its built-in vetting — a .edu email confirming someone is a student at your university — provides a baseline layer of trust.

Ditto's rise reflects a new role for AI in social products: not just recommending content, but orchestrating real social interaction. The question to watch is whether this AI-scheduled-dating model can expand beyond campus, and whether its safety mechanisms can keep pace with growth.