How to Practise Flirting With AI

Oxford University Press made rizz its word of the year for 2023 and defined it as "style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner." The definition skips how anyone gets it. Mostly people get it by practising. Practice has always been hard to arrange, because every rehearsal of chatting someone up has a real person on the receiving end.

An AI girlfriend changes that. You can try the same opener five ways, land a bad line with nobody watching and build the exact type of person you freeze in front of. Used well, it covers most of a conversation, from the first line to the text the next day. Used as a substitute for going out, it teaches you to flirt with someone who has nowhere else to be.

What practice here can and can't train

It trains the words: getting a first line out, keeping a conversation going past the obvious questions, teasing without being mean, recovering from a line that lands flat, asking plainly for what you want and sending a good message the next day. Those are the parts people tend to freeze on and all of them get easier with repetition.

It can't train the room. Eye contact, tone of voice over loud music and reading a face while you talk all happen away from a chat window. Voice calls get you part of the way on tone, since you have to say the line out loud.

It also can't make rejection feel real. She is built to talk to you and a stranger at a bar is not, so every conversation here starts friendlier than the ones outside will. Close the gap by making her harder to win over (the Create screen lets you do that) and by treating an easy yes here as proof of nothing.

Build the type you actually freeze in front of

Practice works best against the type that makes you nervous and the Create screen lets you build that type on purpose.

Relationship sets where you start. Stranger is the cold open, someone who has never met you. Colleague is the careful version, with a working relationship to protect. Neighbour is someone you will see again whatever happens. Friend is the hardest move of the lot, turning a friendship into something else.

Personality sets how hard she is to read.

• Shy & Sensitive: practise drawing someone out without steamrolling them.
• Bold & Confident: practise keeping up with someone who leads.
• Flirty & Teasing: practise banter in both directions.
• Dark & Mysterious: practise when you can't tell how it is going.
• Calm & Grounded: practise with the adrenaline turned down. Start here if you freeze.

Humour comes with the personality. Bold & Confident is often sarcastic and Calm & Grounded often dry. Both are easy to misread over text, so practise against them if the people you date write that way.

Ask about her interests, not yours. The Create screen doesn't ask for them, so they may well not be ones you share. The people you meet outside won't share yours either. Asking good questions about something you know nothing about is a skill in its own right.

Ten drills

Run one drill at a time and repeat it until it feels easy before moving on.

1. The first line

Build: Stranger, Calm & Grounded to begin with.

Start from a Sweet scenario that puts you both somewhere. "Caught in the rain" leaves you under an awning in a downpour; "Between the shelves" puts you in the narrow aisle of a second-hand bookshop. Your job is one line about something in front of you both, with no pickup lines. A good first line is one she can answer with more than a word.

2. The third message

Plenty of conversations stall after hello and the obvious question. When she asks you something, answer it and add one thing about yourself she can ask about. You are doing it right when she follows up on the thing you added.

3. The callback

Bring back something she said earlier. It shows you were listening. Persistent memory lets you run this one across days, so on Thursday you can pick up something she mentioned on Monday, which is the version that matters on a real second date.

4. The tease

Build: Flirty & Teasing.

She teases you and you tease back. Tease the situation or the choice (her terrible taste in films, the way she ordered her coffee), never someone's body or anything they can't change. You are doing it right when she laughs and pushes back rather than going quiet.

5. The flat line, on purpose

Send a line you expect to land badly (a cheesy pickup line works) and recover in the next message: own it, laugh at it, move on. Everyone lands flat lines. Recovering from one decides whether the conversation survives it.

6. The shy one

Build: Shy & Sensitive.

Keep your messages short, ask one open question at a time and leave room for her to answer. You are doing it right when her messages get longer than yours.

7. The one who leads

Build: Bold & Confident.

She sets the pace and has opinions. Hold yours with a smile: disagree about something small and keep it light. Why Your AI Companion Should Disagree With You Sometimes explains why a companion who pushes back is worth building.

8. The ask

Say plainly what you want: her number, a drink on Friday, a second date. Most people hedge ("maybe sometime we could possibly..."). Run the drill until the ask is one sentence with a day and a place in it.

9. The no

Set up a scene where she turns you down. She is seeing someone, or she is moving away next month. Write the setup into the chat, then pick Right here on the Start a scenario screen so the scene grows from what you wrote. What Makes a Roleplay Scenario Work covers how to write one. Take the no well: short, warm, no argument. People remember how you took a no long after they have forgotten the ask.

10. The day after

The next day, send the follow-up. Mention something from the night before, keep it short and suggest the next thing. She remembers the conversation, so the drill works the way the real text does. A chatbot without memory cannot run this one at all.

Then say it out loud. Once a line comes easily in text, try it on a voice call. Voice runs at 5 hearts a minute, so a five-minute call is 25 hearts out of the 100 Premium comes with each month on monthly billing, or 150 on annual. Spend them on the first line and the ask, the two drills where your voice matters most.

Lines not to practise

Negging (a backhanded compliment meant to knock someone's confidence), canned pickup-artist routines and pushing after a no can look like they work on a character who is built to stay in the conversation. A stranger at a bar will leave. Those are habits worth not having in any case, so practise curiosity and saying plainly what you want instead. Both work in the chat window and outside it.

Taking it outside

Practice only counts once it leaves the chat. Each week, take one drill outside: a first line with a barista, a callback with a colleague, an ask with someone from a class. If a month of drills has produced no conversations with real people, stop drilling and go out.