During a moment where singles are increasingly sick of dating apps and turning to IRL events, the apps themselves are leaning harder into technology to find love, particularly artificial intelligence.
The latest announcement comes from Bumble, the dating app known for "women making the first move." The app plans on expanding its AI features in the coming months, TechCrunch reported. During Goldman Sachs' Communacopia + Technology Conference this week, Bumble CEO Lidiane Jones said that the app is planning to add an "AI photo picker" to help create one's profile, as that's something users have anxiety doing.
This comes months after Tinder announced its own AI photo picker tool, Photo Selector. Tinder users provide a selfie for facial recognition, allow Tinder access to their photos, and Photo Selector curates the photos for one's profile. (Mashable found that this photo tool is relatively safe from a privacy perspective, but users should always stay cautious when sharing sensitive data like this.)
During a time where major dating apps are competing against each other — and growing dating app fatigue — these apps have started introducing very similar features and blurring the distinctions between them.
Additionally, Jones said over the fall and winter, there will be a focus on "authenticity" when it comes to product rollouts at Bumble. She mentioned Opening Moves, a prompt women can give on their Bumble profile so men can technically make the first move now. Opening Moves launched in May. Jones also mentioned additional filters, more support for engendering healthy conversations (perhaps AI-generated icebreakers that are already on Bumble for Friends), and continuing to use AI for safety purposes. Earlier this year, Bumble launched Deception Detector to weed out scam and fake profiles.
Jones emphasized that the use of AI at Bumble isn't about replacing users, but wanting users to be themselves. These announcements follow Bumble founder and former CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd describing the future of dating as using an "AI concierge" to date for you. As NBC News reported, people were not impressed. It remains to be seen how users will react to these upcoming AI features.
