Meta announced on Monday that it is bringing an AI assistant to Facebook Dating. This chatbot is designed to help users find matches that are more closely tailored to their specific desires. For instance, a user could ask the assistant to find “a Brooklyn girl in tech” or to help them refine their profile.
To combat “swipe fatigue,” Meta is also introducing a new feature called “Meet Cute,” which provides users with a weekly “surprise match” chosen by its algorithm. This is part of a broader effort to expand the app’s user base, as Facebook Dating has seen matches among adults ages 18 to 29 increase by 10% year-over-year. However, the app’s user base remains small compared to competitors like Tinder, which has approximately 26.25 million daily active users, and Hinge, which has 10 million.
Catching Up to the Competition
AI features have become a standard in mainstream dating apps. Match Group, the owner of Tinder, Hinge, and OkCupid, has invested over $20 million in AI and partnered with OpenAI. This investment has already produced features like an AI photo selector for Tinder, which helps users choose the best profile images, and AI-powered matching. Hinge has also introduced a feature that uses AI to help users improve their responses to profile prompts.
Bumble has added similar AI features, and its founder, Whitney Wolfe Herd, has even suggested a future where users could have personal “AI concierges” that go on dates with other people’s AI to determine compatibility. This race to integrate AI comes as Match Group has faced financial struggles, with its stock price losing about 68% in the last five years.
Author’s Opinion
The integration of an AI assistant into Facebook Dating is a clear sign that AI is no longer a novelty but a necessity for survival in the competitive dating app market. For a platform like Facebook Dating, which has a smaller user base than its rivals, AI offers a way to differentiate itself and provide a more personalized, efficient user experience. This arms race of AI features suggests that the future of online dating will be defined by intelligent algorithms that do more than just match profiles—they will actively guide and enhance the entire dating process. This could either make the search for a partner more efficient or ironically, make the experience more detached and algorithmic.
Featured image credit: Pavel Danilyuk via Pexels
For more stories like it, click the +Follow button at the top of this page to follow us.