Just as Snow White’s evil stepmother asked her magic mirror who was the most beautiful in the kingdom, users of the dating app Tinder will now be able to ask her which of the photos on their phone appear most favorable. The tool will take a look at the user’s photo album and select the five it thinks are the best.
And Tinder is testing an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that will help its users select the photos in which they are most captivating, so that they have a better chance of succeeding and getting a match with someone who has swiped right on this image selected by the AI.
With this initiative the popular dating app makes two things clear. One was already known, and that is that Tinder is mainly used to get one-night dates and sex without commitment, in which physical attraction is a determining factor. The second, that Tinder does not believe that beauty is on the inside.
As explained by Bernard Kim, executive director of Match Group – the company that owns Tinder – AI can contribute to eliminating the stress of having to make this selection yourself.
“I really believe that AI can help our users create better profiles in a more efficient way that really shows their personalities,” said Kim.
But it doesn’t stop there, and those responsible for the application are already thinking about other possible uses of AI to improve the experiences of their customers, around 75 million worldwide.
So, for example, they are also looking into the possibility that generative artificial intelligence will help their users write the descriptive biography that accompanies the photos on each profile.
This feature is still in its infancy and is only available in a few countries in testing, but it uses an artificial intelligence system that suggests personalized text to fill in the “Interests” and “Relationship Goals” sections ” of user profiles.
“It is difficult to write a biography that is perfect and does not seem hopeless. AI gives the opportunity to optimize the time that users spend on dating apps”, said Crystal Cansdale, Inner Circle’s communications director, a few days ago.
Mark Van Ryswyk, Tinder’s chief product officer, said a recent study had shown that a third of its members would “without hesitation” use generative AI to help them create a profile.
On the other hand, in a letter it sent this week to its shareholders and which The Guardian has had access to, Match Group told them that the application intended to use AI to “show the right content to the right people, to help improve relevancy and ultimately user results,” in other words, less left-swiping and less frustration.
And here’s the key to why not just Tinder, but the entire online dating industry, is adopting various generative AI tools to avoid “dating fatigue,” meaning people who, tired if they don’t get the expected results, they stop using this type of application.
But as in the Snow White story, there is also a poisoned apple: that AI helps create many more fake or unrealistic profiles than already exist, and even that users use chat bots, such as now ChatGPT, to talk to your potential scrolls.
