- Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd told Bloomberg in an interview that AI can enhance the dating game.
- She said AI can help dating app users improve their flirting and can even be good for business.
- The CEO's thoughts on AI come as dating apps begin to include generative AI features into their platforms.
AI has come for your favorite dating apps — and the CEO of Bumble thinks the technology can help users land more dates.
Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of the popular dating app, said during an interview that AI — specifically chatbots, which she said are "all the hype right now" — has the potential to revolutionize dating by helping people find love and live happier lives more quickly.
"This moment here and now at the intersection of this explosive consumer-forward AI discussion is one of the more interesting moments in dating," Wolfe Herd told Bloomberg on this week's episode of "The Circuit with Emily Chang." "I think we can help a lot of people across the world find their happiness a lot quicker, a lot safer, and a lot better."
One way the Bumble CEO sees AI facilitating relationships is by helping online daters improve their flirting — a skill that she said is, in part, why single Americans have trouble dating.
"The average US single doesn't date because they don't know how to flirt, or they're scared they don't know how," Wolfe Herd said. "What if you can leverage the chatbot to instill confidence, to help someone feel really secure before they go and talk to a bunch of people they don't know?"
Wolf Herde doesn't just think AI can help people flirt better — she said that the technology can help dating apps make more money. She argues that it is rare to "hear someone spend their life with the same person," which means that newly single people re-entering the online dating market could benefit from AI.
"When you actually take a longer-term horizon, the re-engaged customer is a really important business, and AI is going to be a huge tailwind to this, a huge catalyst to helping people really both shine but also attract in terms of compatibility and better matching," she said.
Wolf Herde's thoughts on how AI will shape online dating come as Bumble continues to develop its AI strategy to make the platform safer.
Earlier this week, the dating app updated its community guidelines, adding a clause that states that "attempts to artificially influence connections, matching, conversations through the use of automation or scripting" are "strictly prohibited." A few months prior, Bumble joined an AI safety collective — in partnership with TikTok an OpenAI — to help guide its efforts to "fight consensual image abuse" on the internet such as deepfake porn. Last year, Bumble open-sourced its AI tool — first launched in 2019 — that detects "unwanted lewd images" like nudes across the platform.
"We see more opportunities to integrate AI further into our user journey, as this is just the tip of the iceberg in using AI to improve our curation and the quality of the connections we make," a Bumble spokesperson told Insider.
Bumble isn't the only dating app turning its focus on AI. In August, Match Group — the parent company behind Tinder and Hinge — announced it's adding new AI features to its apps that can select the best profile photos and explain why a match is compatible.
While some believe that AI-assisted dating may feel dystopian, Wolf Herde said she doesn't think the technology will compromise the need for humans to relate with one another.
"Is the world suggesting that the whole world replaces human connection with a chatbot?" she told Bloomberg when asked about her fears around AI. "If that's truly the case, I promise you we'll have bigger issues than Bumble.
"I don't think you will ever replace the need for real love and human connection."