Bumble Planning AI Wingman Tools
Contributed by: kellyseal on Friday, October 11 2024 @ 11:55 am
Last modified on Friday, October 11 2024 @ 12:43 pm
Bumble plans to enhance its platform with new AI-powered features in the next few months, particularly in the areas of profile creation and conversation support.
According to Tech Radar, Bumble CEO Lidiane Jones spoke at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia technology conference in mid-September and offered the new plans of where Bumble is headed. She said the company was focused on developing AI tools to enhance user experience.
One tool she mentioned was an AI-driven feature to help users pick out photos for their profile, similar to what Tinder launched, to help improve matches.
“We want the bar for profile creation to continue to be high, but we want to reduce the friction that exists users,” Jones said at the conference, according to Tech Radar[*1] . “Users have a lot of anxiety in creating profiles. We’re going to make that as smooth as possible. So AI for profile creation is a big one.”
The female-first dating app has had a rocky year along with other popular apps like Tinder, but the company is looking to AI to help drive new interest and growth.
The first AI-driven feature Bumble will test is the photo picker, but if that catches on with users, they have plans for AI features to help users craft a bio as well as prompts for starting conversations. Opening lines seem to be a pain point for many dating app users, which is why they are turning to ChatGPT and other tools to help them build their profiles and talk to their matches.
Bumble has been trying these kinds of features out in its Bumble for Friends app, but not yet on the dating platform. Grindr is developing similar tools to create a virtual wingman to help users with their online messaging skills.
For the most part, Bumble has used AI to enhance safety on its platform, including a new feature that lets users report a profile with what appear to be AI-generated photos or videos. The dating app also launched Private Detector which scans images sent over its messaging platform for ludeness, and blurs them before they appear to the recipient. Jones reminded people of this during the conference, according to Tech Radar.
“One of the key principles for us as we embrace more and more AI in our products and services is ensuring that AI is not replacing users. And our belief is that AI can facilitate you showing up, but we still want users to be themselves. We want them to speak for themselves,” Jones said at the conference. “We’re really excited about the use of AI for future innovation here, but again, with the principle that people are meeting real people.”