Over the last few years, artificial intelligence has been steadily introduced into our lives largely without much consent. A system update on our phone or computer may include summaries of two-sentence text messages, and predictive text is anticipating what I’m writing at this very moment. We can get AI therapy, or ask a chatbot the best way to start a hard conversation with a roommate or craft that one email that we’re dreading to send.
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We’re also seeing AI become a big focus of dating app companies. Anyone using dating apps right now knows there’s plenty of room for improvement, especially when it comes to making the process feel less like a game and keeping daters safe. But it’s unclear if the AI features that are currently being deployed will actually help daters in the long run.
As frustrations mount and user numbers decline, dating app companies appear to be betting on AI as a way for their users to get more from their services faster and easier. Notably, Bumble and Grindr have recently introduced AI features to attract and retain users. Bumble CEO, Lidiane Jones, recently shared with investors that she hoped AI would “reduce the friction that exists for users” as they set up their profiles. Similarly, Grindr has stated that it wants to add value to its users by incorporating AI into many of its newest features like curated matches and identifying global hotspots or “gayborhoods”. With Bumble’s “Concierge” and Grindr’s “Wingman” services, daters have the opportunity to use AI to help them along their dating journey by completing tasks like selecting pictures, creating a profile, matching, and even messaging. Bumble is also working to improve its users’ safety by identifying fake, scam, and spam profiles.
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Even though these companies have massively invested in AI projects, we’re nowhere close to apps being enjoyable. Their focus is on the minutiae of the dating processes they themselves created instead of giving users a qualitatively different experience—one that feels safe, affirming, and more humane. According to a Forbes Health Survey, the majority of each generation from Boomers to Gen Z feels burned out by dating apps. In terms of making dating safer, Match Group, which owns Tinder, Hinge, Match, and OKCupid (among many others), has the potential for a company-wide, coordinated effort to identify, ban and report abusers on its apps, but this doesn’t seem to be a priority. A recently reported case by The Markup, which involved a user in Colorado being reported for rape in 2020 who remained on Hinge for three years and continued to drug and rape at least 15 others using the platform, exemplifies this. (In October 2024, a Denver judge charged the man with 158 years to life in prison.)
All of these AI interventions don’t seem to be making dating any easier, either. Rather, they run the risk of leaving daters with communication and social skills deficits, with younger daters being most susceptible. Gen Z daters have a harder time with in-person meetings and the awkwardness of dealing with rejection. It’s hard to imagine that putting a bot in between them and these experiences will give them valuable practice and help them build resilience.
So much of what my clients dislike about dating apps is just how disconnected they feel from their matches. They may feel a promising start to a conversation or the potential for a date fizzle in seconds without any explanation. Ghosting, getting stood up, and people being dishonest about what they’re looking for are also top concerns. They lament having to pay for features that allege to provide them with better matches only to see the same people in their feed and then opt into a paid plan. They tell me constantly about how difficult it is to continue to put themselves out there only to receive nothing in return—not even good banter.
A bot may help daters craft profiles or conversations. But if the person on the other end does very little to move that conversation forward, is anything materially gained from it? Or if, in the case of Bumble’s Concierge service, two bots are chatting with each other while each person goes about their day, how will daters know if there is actually a connection based on who each of them really is?
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It’s hard to imagine that generations to come will look back and lament that they wished they could date “the old fashioned way” and mean assisted by artificial intelligence. With a growing number of people scrapping dating apps completely, I think we’re all ready for a fundamental change in the dating app space: one that ditches internet personas and instead uses technology to create opportunities for daters to meet in person over shared interests. Using AI to get people offline may seem like a radical idea, but it’s one that many daters right now would appreciate.
So much of dating involves allowing for things to unfold with another person, learning their quirks, and letting them learn ours. It’s a distinctly human experience that involves risk, and it is imperfect. We’ve allowed dating apps to impose their version of what dating is supposed to be for some time now, and daters have experienced time and time again how these interventions are complicating our dating lives, not simplifying them. The solution is not adding more technology between us but using it to bring us together in the real world.
There is an opportunity to make dating better. The real change will come when dating apps get back to facilitating meaningful conversations, connections, and relationships all while making sure that bad actors are proactively removed and abusers handled swiftly and permanently. If AI can assist with all of that, I’m all for it.
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