According to Match, Lara will ask singles for personal details and basic information such as age, location and their sexual preferences before they are then invited to set up an account at Match. This can all be done without leaving the Facebook messenger. Once a profile and account have been set up, Lara will then continue to talk in order to help users find other singles on the dating platform.

Now Ready for the UK

Lara began in 2016 and was launched in France at first. The developers behind the bot, however, are now ready to roll this service out into the UK. According to the dating site, “Lara is not restricted to answering closed questions and can engage with singles in a natural way." This is also thanks to the detailed profiles that Match members have which let the chatbot analyse them in order to see what people like… and therefore allow Lara to act as a real dating coach.

There are limits to what Lara can do, however… although you can pay for a premium membership on Match.com in order to get even more help. What’s interesting is that this kind of help could also be a good way of attracting more people to use the service.

"With Messenger being used by over one billion users worldwide and now a big part of people’s everyday lives, developing the first dating bot has been a priority for us to make finding a date easier for singles wherever they are,”

said Abbie Oguntade, the VP for the Northern European Hub at Match.