A young woman was scrolling through Hinge when she noticed something appeared slightly off with Johnno, a young man she matched with.
When she asked him if his photos were AI, he replied, "Hahaha appreciate it nah no AI here."
But a reverse image search showed otherwise, revealing Johnno, or whoever was posing as him, had used AI to deepfake his face onto photos of other men from Pinterest.
When the woman shared her experience in a TikTok that racked up 1.2 million views, something even weirder happened in the comment section. Women posted screenshots of profiles from Andy, Roger and Ben, each with different facial features and hair, but sporting the same flannel shirt and linen pants Johnno was wearing, against the same beachfront background.
"Me realizing the guy I was talking to was using AI pics from this post…," one user commented. "I came across a guy that did this too!! Every single photo came up on a photo search from Pinterest," one woman commented. "It's a breeding ground for catfish and it's just gonna get worse so buckle up," another user commented.
These increasingly subtle, hard-to-detect modifications are an issue dating experts say is becoming more common as users navigate a barrage of artificial intelligence in the dating world, from AI-aided prompts and conversations to increasingly sophisticated photo edits.
Amy Chan, a dating coach and the author of "UNSINGLE: How to Date Smarter and Create Love That Lasts," says her clients have encountered an increase of AI-altered images and conversations.
How AI is changing the dating world
AI is rapidly changing the online dating world for young people, as more than half of adults under 30 report using dating apps like Tinder, Match, Bumble and Hinge, according to 2023 data from Pew Research.
2026 data from Match and the Kinsey Institute finds that nearly four in 10 U.S. singles have used AI in their dating lives. The trend is especially pertinent in young users, with 67% of Gen Z singles reporting using AI.
A crop of new apps like Your Move AI, FireTexts, Keys AI and Rizz function as AI wingmen, analyzing conversations and providing options on how to respond. And AI-native dating apps like Amata, Known, Sitch and Ditto are using artificial intelligence as the basis of their matchmaking technology.
In other viral videos, women recounted similar experiences with profiles like Johnno.
"This might be one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen on a dating app," content creator Dana Kuritzkes says at the start of the video about the experience of a friend who matched with a man using AI-generated photos on Hinge in the Bay Area. "Her first thought, and I quote, was, 'Why do all of these photos look like stock images?'"
In the video, she scrolls through screenshots of the profile, examining staged photos of a hike and one at a winery where people’s fingers are missing from the glasses.
Online dating coach Austin Dunham recounted that a friend sent him screenshots of a Hinge user who cloned a photo of him from Instagram in a white shirt against a palm tree.
"The fact that women are catching on to this and can spot where things are coming from goes to show how many guys are actually starting to use AI photos," Dunham explained in a Sept. 17 TikTok. "I believe it's going to cause a really big epidemic in terms of the online dating space," Dunham said.
Chan says there’s nothing wrong with using AI for some grammatical help editing a bio. But using AI to essentially create a personality, or alter the one you have to be more interesting, is an issue.
While suitors may think they’re coming across as more intelligent or funny by using AI to come up with their bio and prompts, Chan warns it may have the opposite effect.
"Someone can read it, detect the AI copy and not be interested in engaging with you further," Chan says. "Authenticity is a value people crave more than ever, (and) using washed down, AI answers is the antithesis of that."
Dating apps know they have an AI photo problem. More are instituting live verification
Brandon Wade, founder and co-CEO of Seeking.com, says the platform has seen a proliferation of AI, with some individuals registering accounts under multiple phone numbers and testing out alternate profiles to compare results.
"People have realized hey it's a numbers game," Wade says. "With the use of AI they can now run multiple dating profiles on multiple different sites to be able to get the results that they want."
Wade warns that these AI profiles can also be tied to scammers who target vulnerable individuals who are looking for companionship or professionals with disposable income.
The platform in January 2025 introduced a Selfie Liveness Check to verify a live selfie against uploaded profile photos. Data from 2025 found the new feature caught 53,000 scammers on the platform, many of who were posing as entirely generated users of different races, ages and genders. Seeking.com found that a majority of these scammers were coming from romance scam hotspots in Africa and Southeast Asia.
"We do see more of that sort of activity specifically from scammers because they are trying to cast a much broader net and target people that way. With actual genuine daters, that is not a behavior that we're seeing as often," Wade says.
Tinder and Bumble also started requiring similar biometric face checks for U.S. users.
Hinge offers optional AI-enabled features to help users improve their prompts. They employ a combination of AI-based moderation tools and human moderators to vet profiles. In March 2026, they started rolling out Face Check, a verification process that uses a selfie video to confirm a person’s authenticity and that their face matches their profile.
"The authenticity of our community is important to helping daters find safe and meaningful connections," Ben Celebicic, Hinge’s chief product and technology officer, told USA TODAY. "If a user decides to include generative AI on their profile, it should not be used to misrepresent themselves or their intentions. Our goal is to ensure that our users only leverage AI to build trustworthy connections with other daters, so they can find love and delete the app."
The issue with these verification processes, commenters online point out, is that many instances of AI do use someone’s real face, bypassing verification processes, but later edit subtle elements of a photo to make their attire, physique or background more interesting. These apps also face privacy concerns from users about how facial verification videos and photos are collected are stored.
Chan says it’s the digital equivalent to lying, and that the same goes for over-filtering a photo. Men in the comments have pointed out that they’ve also encountered AI-fueled photos on women’s profiles, as well as heavily edited ones.
"I have had clients who show me their profile, and I’m like, 'that doesn’t look like you.' They get defensive and I have to tell them matter of factly, the photo has been so altered, or it’s a very old photo that they’ve altered, that they’re setting themselves up for a bad date," Chan says.
Instead, she advises clients to keep their profiles realistic and true to themselves. She recommends exchanging a few messages and going straight to either a video chat or IRL.
Otherwise, users risk going right back to square one.
"The person will feel shocked and deceived and that is usually impossible to bounce back from on a first date," Chan says.
Rachel Hale’s role covering Youth Mental Health at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input. Reach her at rhale@usatoday.com and@rachelleighhale on X.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: She thought her Hinge match’s photo looked off. Then she realized why
