Another Black Mirror Episode Comes True

Netflix’s Black Mirror is slowly overtaking The Simpsons when it comes to TV shows correctly predicting real-world events. We’ve written in the past about how Black Mirror correctly predicted how people are using AI to talk to dead loved ones from beyond the grave. Now, it’s Black Mirror’s take on dating that might be coming true next.

An episode titled Hang the DJ was published on Netflix in 2017. It was written by British writer Charlie Brooker, the show’s creator. If you’ve never seen Black Mirror, all you need to know is that each episode is a standalone story that usually takes place in the near future and is almost always very, very dark in terms of tone. Some episodes will definitely give you nightmares.

The show is known for its sci-fi plots that build off of tech ideas rather than aliens and spaceships. In Hang the DJ (spoilers), two young people are seen falling in love under quite strange circumstances.

The twist at the end of the episode is that they have been inside a Matrix and are one of 1,000 simulated versions of their real selves. They are, in fact, inside a dating app, and now that they have displayed real love for one another, the real two humans they’re based on in the real world are sent an alert to their phone—they have a 99.8% match probability.

Just seven years after the episode first aired, the futurist idea of sending virtual versions of yourself out into the digital world to date other virtual versions of people might not sound so unrealistic after all.

Speaking this week at Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco, Whitney Wolfe Herd (the founder of Bumble who met her husband offline on an Aspen vacation) shared her thoughts on how AI will transform dating apps in the future.

“You could, in the near future, be talking to your AI dating concierge and you could share your insecurities ... and then it could give you productive tips for communicating with other people,” Wolfe Herd said on stage.

Okay, still not Black Mirror enough just yet. She went on to add:

“You could, in the near future, be talking to your AI dating concierge and you could share your insecurities ... and then it could give you productive tips for communicating with other people.”

Woah! There we have it, then. Another Black Mirror episode might actually be coming to life, and you’ll soon be sending out the AI version of yourself to date on your behalf.

Here’s hoping your AI clone doesn’t end up dating your ex.