While the online dating industry is clearly booming, it remains riddled with complaints: from repeated ghosting, exhaustion with the sensory overload of potential matches, the proliferation of fake accounts, to reports of harassment—dating apps can be exhausting. While technology is the cause of this fatigue, machine learning and artificial intelligence may be the key to solving the systemic problems that pervade online dating apps—which some companies have already begun exploring.
AI is already being used in dating apps today
The dating app Hinge already employs machine learning as part of its algorithm by suggesting a “Most Compatible” match to its users. The app separates its users based on who has liked them and then tries to find patterns within those likes. If, for example, a person likes someone named Sam, then they may also be interested in the people who received likes from the people who also liked Sam.
Kevin Teman is trying to take the revolutionization of dating apps a step further. He is the founder of the Denver-based startup AIMM—an acronym for “artificially intelligent matchmaker.” The significant difference between this app and those that have come before it lies in its implementation of AI software. The users of the app are in constant conversation with a female-sounding software that coaches, encourages, advises, and gives its users feedback throughout the process in which they are matched with a person, have their first phone call with them, and they go on their first date together. The purpose of this voice is to mimic human interaction, and it takes a full week for the app to “get to know you.”
Match.Com employs a similar artificially intelligent program to help its users find love with the chatbot Lara—which was first launched in France in 2016 and in the UK the following year. The bot serves as a wing woman who communicates via typing and helps the website’s users set up their dating profiles—giving users compliments and asking them questions that will help them find a match. According to experts, this encourages people to be more honest about what they want, instead of simply writing what they think would draw the most interest from potential matches.
Meanwhile, the UK-based dating app Badoo uses facial recognition technology in its ‘Lookalikes’ feature—a feature that allows people to pair with people who look like their favourite celebrity or someone they know in real life. The feature allows its users to look through the names of innumerable celebrities to find one that they are attracted to while also allowing them to upload any picture of any person directly from their computer (creepy?).
The potential of AI in dating apps
The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning would not only make it significantly easier to detect fraud and filter fake accounts and inappropriate content—but would also be a means of employing creative methods to make dating apps more effective and less tiresome. Possibilities include using AI to figure out the “dating type” of an app’s users by discovering a pattern in the facial features of the people they usually swipe right on. It may, further, detect objects in images that its users have shown a routine preference towards—such as guitars or beaches.
While the future of dating apps is unlikely to be any better at ascertaining what makes two people romantically or sexually compatible—it could make dating a lot easier (albeit, perhaps, a tad more superficial).
