Bumble Inc. unveiled a new artificial intelligence-powered assistant designed to act as a personal matchmaker, the company’s latest effort to reinvigorate itself at a time when many users have shown dating-app fatigue.
The new opt-in tool, called Dates, starts with a private, in-depth conversation that explores broad topics like values, relationship goals, communication style, lifestyle and dating intentions. When it identifies two people who are aligned in these areas, both are notified with a summary explaining why they are a strong match.
Chats with the AI assistant are private and nothing will be shared on a user’s public profile, the company said on Wednesday. Members can also choose what topics of their conversation can be shared with a potential match.
Dates — which is powered by Bumble’s own AI model, called Bee — is meant to move beyond surface-level swiping to better understand users and their needs, founder and Chief Executive Officer Whitney Wolfe Herd said in an interview.
The tool will not write messages on behalf of members or generate conversations. It will roll out first as part of a pilot program for a select group of users. Though it will be free to start, it could become a premium offering over time, the company said.
The new feature, which was announced during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, is part of a larger effort by Bumble to return its namesake dating app to growth. Wolfe Herd, who earlier co-founded Tinder, started Bumble in late 2014 with the novel idea that women should be the ones to start conversations on her dating app. While that pitch was unique at the time, revenue has since slowed, with Gen Z splitting from older generations in how they prefer to date.
Bumble isn’t alone: Other dating companies, including Tinder parent Match Group and Grindr Inc., are also reinventing their apps in the age of AI in a bid to reverse stubborn subscriber losses. Tinder is expected to unveil its next-generation AI features at an event in Los Angeles on Thursday.
The goal of Dates is to get people to meet up with compatible matches and to “remove some of the emotional friction that really sits between matching and meeting,” Wolfe Herd said, adding that she sees solving this challenge as a key opportunity for the company.
It builds on what she said reflects the Bumble community’s feedback, which is that users don’t just want to go on more dates but better ones.
“We don’t see AI as a gimmick layer on top of swiping,” she said. “It really needs to be an infrastructure for better relationships. It should not just be a chatbot layered on top of something.”
Wolfe Herd has previously said she wouldn’t have swiped on her husband’s dating profile if she had seen one, but now believes having an AI agent knowing how compatible they actually are could have brought them together otherwise.
The company said future iterations of the tool may include date suggestions and offer prompts requesting feedback, allowing it to learn how a date went so that it can better understand members’ needs.
Wolfe Herd believes the era of dating is shifting from randomized discovery — the current swipe model that she helped invent while at Tinder — to an era of search, giving users more control over their experience, rather than “feeling like the algorithm is defining who you see and why you see them.”
At the same time, she sees AI and the more conventional swiping design complementing each other.
“It’s like online shopping — you could go to an online site and scroll for dresses and shoes and add something to your wish list but maybe it’s not in your size,” she said. “Or you could go for the personal shopper, and say ‘I have a wedding this weekend and want to wear a pastel dress in a certain size and it needs to be delivered to my house in time.’ You can be very precise, and the personal shopper will bring me back six to eight options that all fit the criteria.”
Bumble is already using artificial intelligence to enhance safety and verification processes, including automated detection of spam and fake profiles with tools like Deception Detector. It is also leaning on the technology to help purge bad-actor accounts and for features like Profile Guidance and its “Review Before You Send” prompt that nudges people to think twice before sending certain messages.
Kelly writes for Bloomberg.
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