Just like other recently updated apps, Bumble is also exploring AI features to assist its users in their novel pursuit of finding love. Bumble’s new AI tools were revealed during the 2024 Goldman Sachs Communacopia Technology Conference, where CEO Lidiane Jones walked the listeners through some of the changes she envisioned for the app.
The two main areas of integration mentioned were the AI-powered Bumble profiles and AI conversation support, both key elements of the app’s functioning. The inclusion of AI in dating apps was inevitable sooner or later, but how these apps integrate these tools is what we’re interested in seeing.
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Bumble AI Features Coming Soon—Ready to Find Your Match?
Bumble has been working on AI features for a while now and already has some tools available to help kickstart conversations. Now, the company is looking to bring a few more features to their services in winter, but an exact timeline hasn’t been provided.
Bumble’s AI plans for conversation assistance and profile photo selection was first mentioned during an investor call. During the call, Jones explained, “We have an ambitious view of how AI will enhance the value we deliver to our customers in each step of the dating journey for profile creation, discovery, engagement, and the core of our matching models.”
Artificial intelligence is getting smarter by the day and while its ability to make decisions isn’t highly regarded, it can make some calculated assessment based on the data it gathers from its own users.
First We Have An AI Photo Picker
One of Bumble’s AI features include a photo picker assistant that can help users determine what images would help their profile best. For many of us, this decision-making is driven by the collective vote of close friends who scan their galleries diligently for the best images to represent us.
Unfortunately, it’s when they aren’t around that we turn to dating apps, a majority of which are provided by Match Group to create the illusion of choice. Some outliers apps like Duolicious, Lefty, and Drybaby serve their own niche audience, but they’re primarily overshadowed by Match Group’s machinations.
Returning to Bumble’s new tools, the upcoming AI photo picker should help users select the best images that represent them from the photo gallery, making the process of profile creation a lot smoother. According to Tech Rader, Tinder is working on a similar feature, so this could eventually become a standard service on dating apps.
“We want the bar for profile creation to continue to be high, but we want to reduce the friction that exists for users. Users have a lot of anxiety in creating profiles. We’re going to make that as smooth as possible. So profile creation is a big one.”
In general, AI could be very integral to the process of creating detailed profiles that best represent who you are. You can already throw your information at ChatGPT and other genAI tools for a brief bio, but these tend to sound unbelievably generic and forcefully quirky. If Bumble does introduce such a tool, they’ll have to work hard to ensure the AI assistance doesn’t cause the quality of profiles to further decline.
Bumble AI for Conversations Starters
AI-powered Bumble profiles sound both interesting and unsettling, but another way for artificial intelligence integration appears to be in encouraging conversations. It’s another task that should ideally be human-led, but many app users struggle with starting conversations in new and original ways every single time.
Taking matters into its own electronically generated hands, Bumble is going to introduce an icebreaker feature that should help users start a conversation more naturally with the help of prompts that are personalized for them. The Friend AI pendant is ambitious enough to consider that AI messages can fill in for human conversation entirely, but Bumble’s tool is not expected to be quite so hubristic.
Bumble already has a similar AI tool for its “Bumble for Friends” section, assisting users with starting a friendly conversation with those they want to build a bond with. Unsurprisingly, this text generation happens through OpenAI.
Some of the prompts are pretty useful, creating a context for the conversation rather than the traditional “Hi, hello, what do you do?” These conversations are much easier to continue and will likely leave the app with happier, more satisfied users.
AI-powered Profiles Are Permissible, But Bumble Says No to Fake AI Profiles
Bumble’s AI features are meant to enhance the user’s experience on the app and support them in making strong profiles, finding good matches, and encouraging engaging conversations. The fake AI-generated profiles with no real people behind them detract heavily from this goal. The company has taken serious measures to eliminate such profiles, allowing users to report such accounts themselves if they ever see profiles using AI-generated photos.
Bumble isn’t leaving matters entirely to users either. The dating app owner also released a Deception Detector tool, combining AI moderation with human supervision to identify fake profiles. A large section of the internet is now run by AI bots and they plague every corner of the online world, even dating apps. Some of these fake profiles are very obviously AI-generated, but in cases where people add their own touch of realism, they can be dangerously misleading.
The rise of AI integration in dating apps has its own pros and cons, so while Bumble works on its AI features, it’s reassuring that it is also working on putting checks in place to limit the misuse of such technology. AI tools that arrive in the future need to be thought out carefully.
Bumble Founder and Executive Chair Whitney Wolfe Herd had some interesting ideas to share during an interview with Bloomberg, explaining that someday, users may be able to talk to an AI “dating concierge” about insecurities, essentially seeking the kind of feedback a more rational individual might find from a friend or therapist. She even floated the idea of the concierge going on dates with other concierges to find good matches and determine if their human counterparts could also have a good date. Hopefully, this is a description of a vastly distant future.