Grindr is joining the trend for augmenting dating apps with AI, according to a new Wall Street Journal report. Described as a virtual wingman for online dating, the AI chatbot will proactively try to link prospective romantic partners and even help plan their dates when it officially debuts.
The main idea behind Grindr's development is to take the increasingly common AI chatbot experience, a la ChatGPT, and adapt it to a space where people are looking to connect. The chatbot would have more agency than the usually reactive chatbot, making decisions autonomously and completing tasks on behalf of users without them even asking. In the company's vision, the chatbot will seek out potential dates for users, even messaging on their behalf, then suggest they talk and offer topics for a conversation between users. It will even be able to design a date for them that they would both enjoy and make any reservations necessary.
One of Grindr's particular focuses is the idea of a bot-to-bot conversation between AI agents acting on behalf of different people. The idea seems to be to streamline the initial compatibility testing part of a first conversation. Instead, the AI agents would interact to determine compatibility before the people involved talk. That would theoretically cut down on dates going nowhere and could make Grindr more appealing for people burned out on bad dates.
Of course, this would entail sharing a lot of information about yourself with the AI. Considering Grindr's users are primarily gay and bisexual men who may not be public about their sexuality or live where it is stigmatized, that's a lot of trust to give an AI engine. Grindr claims measures to protect its users' identities and interactions are top of the list of priorities for the AI wingman.
AI romance
While Grindr's plans sound exotic now, there is a real push in the dating app space to augment products with AI. For instance, Tinder has a new feature to help you pick your best profile photo, while Bumble, in addition to photo help, wants AI to help users design their entire profile and smooth the initial conversation between users.
To build the AI, Grindr is working with Ex-human, a company whose AI is built on understanding human emotion. The model is being trained on data specifically relevant to Grindr's user base, including the phrases and style of speech unique to the community using the app. The concepts are still in early testing. The small test group will expand to 1,000 people by 2025 and 10,000 by the next year as Grindr gathers feedback. Grindr is aiming at a gradual feature rollout that will be able to do everything it envisions for its approximately 14 million users by 2027.
