AI is changing dating apps, and how people find love

A.I. is changing dating apps — and how people find love

Dating apps are entering a new era, where artificial intelligence is starting to take over the swiping. After years of user fatigue with endless scrolling, companies like Tinder, Hinge, Bumble and Grindr are testing A.I.-powered matchmakers that promise fewer, more meaningful matches — and perhaps better odds of finding love, according to an article in The New York Times.

Start-ups like Known are leading the shift. The San Francisco-based app asks users personal questions through an A.I. “matchmaker” bot and then arranges real-life dates for a small fee. “It gets people off their phones and into the real world,” says co-founder Celeste Amadon. Users like Emma Inge, a 25-year-old project manager, say it feels refreshing — even if, in her case, the human still ghosted after a great first date.

Tinder is rolling out an A.I. feature called Chemistry that analyses users’ photos to learn their preferences, while Grindr has added “gAI,” a set of tools including an A.I. wingman and profile summaries. Hinge now uses generative A.I. to improve its matching algorithm, reportedly increasing matches by 15 percent. Bumble plans to launch its own A.I. matchmaking app by year-end.

The shift comes as major dating apps struggle to keep users paying. Match Group and Bumble have both lost subscribers this year despite having more users overall. Industry insiders call it the “cycle of despair” — people download, burn out, and delete the apps, only to return months later.

Private equity firms such as Francisco Partners and Permira are exploring acquisitions of dating platforms, betting that A.I. could revive the sector. New leaders — including Match Group’s Spencer Rascoff and Bumble’s returning founder Whitney Wolfe Herd — are pushing hard to integrate smart tech into the dating experience.

As one executive put it, A.I. might not just make better matches — it could save the entire dating app industry. But as one dater quipped after being ghosted by an A.I. match: “It’s the human part that still doesn’t work out.”