spent $15 on an AI dating photo thing and honestly feel kind of stupid for waiting this long to try it (DateShot review)

okay so background. been on tinder and hinge for about a year. not totally dead in the water but definitely not thriving either. maybe 2 or 3 decent matches a month, mostly people I wasnt super into, and i kept noticing that the guys getting a ton of likes all had these really polished photos. not like model hot, just... good photos. proper lighting and framing and all that. meanwhile i had a couple bathroom selfies and a blurry group photo where you can barely tell which one i am.

a coworker mentioned this thing called DateShot and honestly I ignored it for like two weeks because it sounded gimmicky. the pitch is basically "upload your selfies and we generate 25 professional quality dating photos of you." i was picturing one of those uncanny valley ai face things that makes you look like a different person.

eventually i just tried it because i was bored and fed up. you upload like 5 to 10 photos of yourself and their model learns your face and then generates a bunch of new photos of you in different settings and lighting. takes about 30 minutes and they email you the results.

the thing that genuinely suprised me was how much I still looked like myself? like that was my actual worry. my face, my eyes, same general vibe... just photographed properly for once. one of my worst selfies was this dim kitchen photo i uploaded almost as a test and the output from it actually looked like someone competent took it. that was kind of the moment i was like oh wait this is real.

updated my hinge profile on a wednesday evening. by sunday i had more likes than the previous three weeks combined. not slight improvement, like actually noticeable jump. went from the kind of matches where you go "ehh maybe" to people i was genuinely excited to message. same face same person. its kind of insane that photo quality makes that much difference but apparently it really does.

the whole thing is a one time $15 payment. no subscription, no monthly fees. you just pay once and get your 25 photos. i liked that they also delete your uploaded photos after they send the results because i was a little weird about having my face on some random server. they mention it up front which i appreciated.

works for any app too, its just photos so you download them and upload wherever. i used them on tinder and bumble and hinge. probably would work on whatever else you're using.

honest criticisms... the style variety in the outputs is good but not perfect. a few of the 25 were kind of similar to each other so in practice you're picking from maybe 18 or 19 actually different ones. still plenty to work with. also the website is pretty minimal, theres not a ton of guidance on which selfies to upload. i just used a mix of angles and different lighting situations and that seemed to work fine.

who this is for honestly... anyone who knows they're reasonably attractive but their photos aren't representing that. most people dont know how to take good photos of themselves. i certainly didn't. this is the lazy mans version of hiring a photographer and its like 95% cheaper. if you've been using the same mediocre selfies for months and wondering why results are slow... just try it. the worst case is you're out $15 and you have 25 photos you dont use.

its dateshot.co if you want to check it out. genuinely one of the better $15 i've spent this year