Tinder’s solution to dating app burnout is more AI

Dating apps are quickly losing their appeal as jaded, super-online, and equally lonely The young generation increasingly reports that they feel burned for the endless slide.

Tinder believes the solution lies in an AI-powered experience.

On Thursday, the company announced a long list of new features that will be rolling out to the app in the coming months.

Starting Thursday, users in the US and Canada will be able to take advantage of a feature called “Chemistry,” which will give users a daily AI-curated recommendation of potential matches. in a Press releaseTinder described it as their “AI-powered way to eliminate dating fatigue.”

The AI ​​will learn more about you through a question-and-answer session, and if you agree to participate, it will scan your camera roll to understand “things like your interests, lifestyle, and personality themes,” the company said. The camera roll scanning feature is not yet available in the app, but will begin testing later this year in Australia, Canada and the US.

While the “Chemistry” feature is limited to a few countries, users around the world can activate “Learning Mode” if they really want Tinder’s AI to give them insight into their personality and tastes. In this mode, Tinder’s AI recommendation system will constantly collect information about you every time you use the app and use it to modify which profiles they recommend to you.

Tinder believes in function. According to internal testing, women who used the “Learning Mode” feature were more likely to return to the app within the first week.

The goal is to eventually grow these AI curation capabilities beyond a few features and integrate them into the entire Tinder experience, the company said.

“With more than half of our users under the age of 30, we’re building alongside a generation that wants dating to feel more authentic, less pressured, and worth it,” CEO of Tinder parent company Match Group Spencer Rascoff said in the press release. “We’re using AI to drive more relevant connections and continue to raise the bar on security so people feel confident taking the next step. Together, these changes mark the most significant evolution of our app in years and make Tinder more trustworthy, social, smart and expressive.”

Also starting to be tested in a few weeks in some parts of the US is the “Photo Enhancement” feature that will use AI to help edit the photos you put on your profile.

The company is also turning to artificial intelligence to address user safety issues with the dating app.

A feature called “Are You Sure?”, which sends alerts to users before they send potentially disrespectful text messages, is getting an LLM revamp, as is “Is this bothering you?”, a feature that detects inappropriate messages, helps the recipient report them, and will now also automatically blur any flagged content.

“These improvements go beyond keyword detection to contextual understanding of the tone and nuances of the conversation, enabling smarter prompts that reinforce respectful behavior in real time,” the company said in a press release.

Earlier this week, Bumble also made a similar AI announcement, introducing an optional AI assistant called “Dates” that will first try to understand more about the user in private conversations with the chatbot and then match users based on their compatibility.

Both Bumble and Tinder, once the two dominant dating apps in the glory days of online dating, have been hit for the great Generation Z’s Dating App Disappointment. Match, which also owns the popular dating app Hinge, has been dealing with constant subscriber drops.

There’s no betting on whether this new AI push by dating apps will actually lead to an increase in users, but previous data says that “AI + romance” is not the combination young users are looking for. TO Bloomberg Intelligence Survey last summer found that Generation Z tends to be uncomfortable with AI features in dating apps, even more so than Millennials.