Dating apps are losing their grip on Gen Z, a generation increasingly fed up with endless swiping and shallow matches, and companies are scrambling to find a solution. Recently, Tinder announced a slew of features, including IRL (in real life) dating sessions, to combat swipe fatigue.
Now, Bumble is trying to address this issue, and its answer is generative AI. As reported by TechCrunch, during its Q4 earnings call, Bumble announced a new AI assistant called Bee.
It’s designed to work like a personal matchmaker, learning your values, relationship goals, communication style, and more, and then using all this information to find you genuinely compatible matches.
Bee is currently in internal testing but is expected to roll out to beta users soon.
How does Bee work?
Bee powers a new dating experience called “Dates”. When you first use it, Bee starts with an onboarding conversation to get to know you. It then identifies another user with shared values and intentions, and notifies both people in the app with a description of why they might be a great match.
It’s a meaningful departure from the standard swipe-right-and-hope approach. Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd also said that the company will experiment with removing the swipe entirely in select markets. In its place, users will get “chapter-based” profiles, where you can connect with someone over different parts of their life story rather than a single photo.
Bumble might also be focusing on getting the dates offline. Wolf Herd said, “You will also see us take a much more deliberate approach to getting people offline versus just in what people refer to as dead-end chat zones.”
Can Bee really help you get a date?
It seems everything is getting its own spin of generative AI these days. It’s in our glasses, in our phones, in our toys, and in our apps. From answering our questions to managing our health data, AI seems to be permeating every aspect of our lives.
It also seems that whenever a company mentions AI, investors reward it with a surge in stock price. After Bumble reported strong quarterly revenue of $224.2 million and highlighted its AI integration plans, the company’s stock jumped 40%.
So, it’s hard to tell whether these AI agents are genuinely helpful or simply a crutch companies are using to stay relevant. Only time will tell if Bee will be useful and help people find dates, but for now, I am circumspect.