SXSW festival Tinder users were in for a surprise Saturday if they "matched" with a brunette 25-year-old named Ava on the popular dating app, reports Adweek.
It all started innocently enough when Ava began texting back-and-forth with Adweek's friend Brock. Then, Ava asked a series of questions that seemed a bit deep for getting-to-know-you pleasantries:
"Have you ever been in love?" Ava asked in a screenshot of the conversation shared by Adweek. "Um, once. I think. But that was a while ago."
"I see. I haven't, although it sounds nice. What makes you human?"
Brock's response: "What makes me human? Let's see my beating heart and these weird feelings."
Ten points to Brock for answering a super-weird question with an honest answer. At this point, we're not entirely sure how Brock wasn't like "WTF?", but we could see how he'd stick around to see where this Ava chick is going.
Turns out, she just wanted to point Brock to her Instagram because he "passed the test." Pretty harmless, right? Well, when you mosey on over to said Instagram IT'S NOT REAL. THE HORROR.
The entire conversation is a ruse. It's just a promotion for an artificial intelligence movie named Ex Machina. And "Ava" is actually Alicia Vikander, a Swedish actor who is in the movie that just so happens to be premiering at SXSW. Seriously.
We are so not down with this. First of all, it's creepy to be messaged by a robot (unless you opt-in to talk to a robot like Joaquin Phoenix in Her), but a robot that's self-aware enough to know that it isn't human and ask you how it feels? Nope.
And, per Tinder's Terms of Service: "The Service is for personal use only. Users of the Service may not use any information obtained from the Service to contact, advertise to, solicit, or sell to any other user without his or her prior explicit consent. Organizations, companies, and/or businesses may not use the Service or the Service for any purpose." Ahem.
Tinder is already a minefield, and now we have to watch out for possible catfishing actors trying to market a movie? Ugh. Left swiping everything.