Yep, we’re using OpenClaw to date now

Ben Guez has “a bunch of potential international wives in [his] DMs,” thanks to an automated script he set up using OpenClaw, Claude code, and Instagram trial reels.

“I think it’s crazy, like the potential is insane right now,” Guez, a content creator and startup founder, told TechCrunch. “I’m not sure if everyone’s gonna think it’s good, but I mean, it’s working.”

How is Guez is wooing so many women? First, he uses the open source AI agent OpenClaw to track World Cup match results. After each game, OpenClaw triggers Claude to create and post a nearly identical Instagram “trial reel” with the same template. In the video, Guez stares out a train car window looking dejected, with the caption: “I can’t believe {COUNTRY} lost… If any {COUNTRY} girls need emotional support… my DMs are open.”

Guez has made the same post, save for the country name, more than a dozen times. But you can’t tell when you look at his profile, since trial reels don’t show up on a creator’s public page. Since he launched this automation, Guez has gotten over one million views and 200 DMs in a few days. That volume is even more impressive considering that Guez says in his profile that he will only answer DMs sent via Canary, his AI language learning app, which means that these women have to download his app.

You have to hand it to him: Guez is really taking “work smarter, not harder” to another level. But once these women realize he doesn’t actually care about Tunisian soccer, wouldn’t they feel played?

“They’re not feeling angry, they’re more impressed, like, ‘Oh, you’re thinking outside of the box, you’re a genuis,’” Guez said. “I think as long as you’re open [about] what you’re doing, I think it’s fine.”

TechCrunch was not able to independently verify the actual reactions of these women, so we’ll just have to take Guez’s word for it. But we can tell you that Guez isn’t the only guy getting creative with the viral AI assistant. While Guez’s methods are a bit more outrageous, other people see OpenClaw as a way to streamline the process of setting up dates.

Jeff Weisbein, founder of a tech PR firm, uses OpenClaw to help him figure out where to take dates across different neighborhoods in South Florida.

“I’m meeting women who are in various parts of South Florida, so I don’t know all of the restaurants or things to do,” Weisbein told TechCrunch. “I have my bot just kind of do all the research and make a document with links to why it’s a choice for whatever type of date it is.”

When I fill him in on Guez’s OpenClaw scheme, he bursts out laughing.

“I guess I’m not leveraging OpenClaw to the fullest,” he said. “But definitely in the realm of using OpenClaw to facilitate a task that I would manually have to do otherwise.”

Like Guez, Weisbein doesn’t hide the fact that he’s using AI tools to help plan dates (it backfired, though, when one woman told him, “I hate AI agents”). In a way, asking OpenClaw where to go for happy hour in Fort Lauderdale isn’t that different from Googling the coolest neighborhood bars, but says he would draw the line at using AI to mediate his actual conversations with women.

“I have seen people create bots and ways to swipe using OpenClaw, and I wouldn’t do that. They say it’s a numbers game, but if that’s what it takes… that seems like a pretty terrible way to do it,” he said. “I feel like you shouldn’t delegate your communication when you’re in a relationship with someone to AI.”

People seem hesitant to let AI meddle once there’s an actual connection, but a tech worker named Cailey said that once she’s decided to end a flirtation, she doesn’t mind using Claude to break things off.

“I started using Claude and created an automation that crafts ‘I no longer wish to see you’ messages based on a few key terms I would enter about the date. It’d then automatically send them for me at random times so that I wouldn’t feel the anxiety of when to send,” she told TechCrunch. “It worked really well, until I mentioned it to someone I was on a date with, who I then had to send an automated message to, and he asked if he was talking to Claude or Cailey.”

What’s worse: getting ghosted, or getting broken up with by an AI?

OpenClaw rocked the tech world with its potential when it went viral this spring, but security advocates have continuously warned users about the dangers of giving an AI assistant unilateral control over all of your accounts.

For Lazer Cohen, the co-founder of the security-focused OpenClaw alternative NanoClaw, there are steep privacy implications of outsourcing personal relationships to AI, even if his company advertises date planning as a potential use case on X.

“Whenever you’re giving an agent access to personal information and accounts, you need human-in-the-loop approval,” Cohen told TechCrunch. “We’ve all heard the stories of OpenClaw creating dating profiles for people without their knowledge or consent, or OpenClaw dating coaches spilling to other groups that they’re being used as a dating coach too.”

NanoClaw has found its way into Cohen’s love life, though he uses it in a way that’s a bit more wholesome than mass-producing reels that ask heartbroken soccer fans to slide into his DMs.

“My wife and I personally use our NanoClaw assistant, Rosie, to manage the schedules of our five children,” he said. “But ‘claws’ are widely used to help couples get the to child-rearing phase.”