Contributed by: kellyseal on Wednesday, November 13 2024 @ 04:05 pm
Last modified on Wednesday, November 13 2024 @ 04:16 pm
Gay dating app Grindr has been hinting at its development of an AI wingman, but now the company is officially testing an initial model, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The WSJ interview with CEO George Arison included more details on the AI wingman, which will keep track of a user’s matches and make conversational suggestions based on messages they have had with other users. The AI bot will even recommend matches with long-term relationship potential and suggest places where they could meet.
According to Arison, down the line, the AI wingmen of Grindr users will be able to chat with each other so they can offer a “robust view” of a match before the user decides to meet in person. “Bot-to-bot conversation not only saves the humans time, it might also spot dating deal-breakers early on,” he told WSJ[*1] .
Arison said: “I always knew that AI was going to be a really big deal, and as we saw where generative AI was going, I realized a lot of this extension stuff can actually be done by AI,” according to WSJ.
Grindr is training its AI wingman on conversations by AI model and avatar maker Ex-Human, which proclaims itself to be “empathetic.” Grindr put a clone of Ex-Human’s model inside its own code base, and is also training it with queer community slang and its own data since the model has mostly been trained in straight romantic conversation, according to WSJ.
Privacy was a big concern for Grindr when developing a generative AI feature which relies on personal data. Many Grindr users live in countries where it’s illegal or taboo to be gay, and others work in government and military jobs where this type of data could be stolen or compromised. Grindr is also facing a class action lawsuit from users who claim the company sold their data to third party advertisers without their consent, including location and other sensitive data.
Grindr told WSJ it will ask users for permission to use their chat history for training its AI bot in order to protect their privacy. In addition, Grindr won’t permit the AI chat bot to have conversations on commercial activity or solicitation (which apparently it encountered with its initial testing).
The new feature is currently being tested by a “small group of regular users” according to Pink News, which will be expanded to 1,000 users by the end of December, and up to 10,000 users in 2025. The goal is to launch the wingman to all 14 million Grindr users by 2027.