San Francisco: After years of aimlessly swiping on dating apps like Hinge and Tinder, Emma Inge, a 25-year-old project manager from San Francisco, decided to try something different.
In September, Inge spent 20 minutes confiding in an artificial intelligence matchmaker after following an ad on the website of a startup called Known. The matchmaker, who is essentially an AI chatbot, asked her over the phone what she wanted in a partner, and she shared her preferences (athletic ability) and red flags (codependency).
A week later, a notification appeared on her phone. She had a match and was able to meet him at the bar for a one-time fee of US$25 (RM105).
“Given the dating scene these days, I thought, ‘Well, I’ll give it a try,'” Inge said. “Let’s do it for the sake of the plot.”
Her experience is an example of how AI is transforming the dating app industry. The biggest dating apps, Hinge, Tinder, Bumble, and Grindr, are using technology to reinvent themselves as startups with AI matchmakers emerge. They’re ushering in a new era of online dating, where people pay for a few premium AI matches a week rather than subscribing to an endless stream of profiles.
“AI already plays a huge role in our business, but I think it could be an incremental change, the next technological change,” Hesam Hosseini, chief operating officer of Match Group, which owns Hinge and Tinder, said in an interview.
With many dating apps struggling, this change couldn’t come at a better time. Most apps allow users to create a free account with the option to pay for perks like unlimited swipes. However, satisfaction with apps is declining, and the number of people willing to pay for them is also decreasing. (Most subscriptions cost about $30 per month.)
Last year, Bumble lost 9% of its paid members and Match Group lost 5%, but both companies saw their total user numbers increase. Paid members make up a small portion of users, but they generate the majority of profits. The 20% of Match Group users who pay for features and subscriptions generate 97% of revenue.
Match Group stock is down 80% from its 2021 high, and Bumble stock is down 90% since its initial public offering (IPO) in the same year. Both companies control the majority of the dating app market.
Dating apps are hitting a hurdle the industry calls the “cycle of despair.” That’s when people download dating apps, get tired of swiping and “ghosting” them, delete them, and re-download them months later.
The move to AI matchmakers will harken back to the early days of online dating, when websites like eHarmony asked users 80 questions about themselves to create a profile, Hosseini said.
Many startups offer AI matchmakers, but larger apps are just beginning to roll out their own versions. Tinder is testing an AI matching service called Chemistry and plans to expand it this month. Users can give apps access to their camera rolls, and AI can scan them to learn more about them. The service will initially be free, but Tinder may start charging for it later.
Hinge, which has around 15 million users, uses AI tools to provide feedback about users’ profiles. This year, the company reprogrammed its matching algorithm using generative AI to better learn user preferences, resulting in a 15% increase in matches, Hosseini said.
Bumble said it plans to release an AI matching app by the end of the year, adding that it has not yet finalized its business model but may charge per match.
Major dating app companies are internally testing other AI tools that may not be released in the future. These include dating coaches who can provide feedback and advice after each date, and AI clones who can date each other and report their results back to their human creators. Facebook Dating, the dating service within the Facebook app, recently introduced an AI feature that allows users to describe their ideal match (brunette, works in tech, lives in New York City) and connects with real-life people who fit that description.
But companies are also grappling with increasing resistance to AI “slop” and unwanted automation. For example, Hinge doesn’t brand its AI capabilities as AI.
Many of the changes took place under new leadership. Last winter, Match Group hired Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff as CEO. He quickly reorganized the company and personally oversaw Tinder. Whitney Wolfe Herd, who founded Bumble in 2014 and left the company in 2024, returned as CEO in March.
“This is not a fad,” Wolfe Herd said of AI dating at a technology conference last year. “We’re going to come in fast and furious.”
As dating app companies grapple with change, some investors see an opportunity. Private equity firms Francisco Partners and Permira have approached dating apps such as Bumble and Grindr about acquisitions, according to two people familiar with the matter. They said they wanted to build a portfolio of about six apps to rival Match Group.
Francisco Partners and Permira declined to comment.
Known, a startup with an AI matchmaker, was founded in May by Stanford dropouts Celeste Amadon, 22, and Asher Allen, 21. They and a group of psychologists came up with questions for the AI matchmaker.
Paying per date rather than a monthly subscription fee “was more of an incentive to actually take people out into the real world and date them,” Amadon said, adding that Known held 10 singles nights in San Francisco, each attended by more than 200 people.
Inge, a project manager in San Francisco, said she signed up for Hinge and Tinder during college, but rarely found meaningful connections. She said she is now “against dating apps” and is trying to meet people in real life. She even signed up for a 6 a.m. running club to socialize, but it didn’t work out. That led her to try Known.
Inge said she went on an AI-produced blind date to a bar in San Francisco last month and was pleasantly surprised by the encounter. She and her date talked for two hours, bonding over shared interests in public transportation and new restaurants. He worked for a robo-taxi company and was “the type of person you would sign up to marry an AI,” she said.
They exchanged numbers and arranged for a second date, but it never happened. Inge said she became a ghost.
“What happened was that AI actually found compatibility,” she said. “What went wrong was the human part.” – ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article was originally published in The New York Times.
