Safety

India-based dating app Schmooze just raised $4 million from Elevation Capital and other angel investors.

The meme-based dating app founded by Vidya Madhavan and Abhinav Bengaluru helps people connect based on their senses of humor and allows them to express their personalities creatively through memes. The round of funding also included investments from the founders of Ultrahuman, The Souled Store, Mosaic Wellness and Paytm, according to Economic Times.

The funding comes at a time when dating app revenue has been declining and dating app companies are struggling to better monetize their platforms. Many are turning to AI for enhanced features, like photo selection, helping users craft bios, and added safety features, hoping to attract users willing to pay for such perks.

Schmooze is also touting its AI-driven features, and said that the new funds will be used to enhance its AI engine as well as for growing the company, according to Economic Times.

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.

Dating app Grindr has issued a warning to its users who live in or are traveling to Brussels after a recent attack.

Grindr has installed a push notification for users in the area that reads: "Be safe! Violent and homophobic setups have been reported in Brussels," according to Brussels Times.

The gay dating app warned users of homophobic violence in the country after local police confirmed they are investigating whether someone used a fake profile to target and kill a family in a recent home invasion in Ixelles, Brussels. A fifty-seven year-old man was shot dead, and his wife and twenty-two year-old son suffered gunshot wounds after their home was invaded.

Image: Grindr

Grindr has shut off the explore option on its platform for the Olympic Village in Paris to protect the identities of athletes who are staying there to compete.

According to Pink News, the gay dating app has blocked global visibility for the Village area. Social media posts have shown that when you search for people in the Olympic Village, no profiles are offered.

According to Grindr’s announcement about the move, it said: “We're turning off features like "Explore" and "Roam" within the Olympic Village. The ‘show distance’ feature will also be turned off by default, but users can share their approximate distance if they decide to turn it on.”

Bumble has announced a new reporting feature for users to alert the app if they suspect a profile of displaying AI-generated photos and videos.

“Fake Profile” allows users to flag and report accounts that they think are AI-generated and being used to deceive other app users. According to Tech Crunch, people using AI to beef up their profiles is creating a new problem on dating apps (aside from the typical bots, spam accounts, and safety issues that have been around for a while) – and that is whether or not to believe that the person in the profile they are seeing is actually that person, or an AI-enhanced version of them.

For example, someone could generate a photo of themselves to make them look more like Taylor Swift, or alter their bodies to show muscles they don’t have in real life, hoping to attract more matches through deception. In other words, they are gaming the system with AI.

A majority of dating platforms have signed on to a new dating safety code in Australia, in an effort to crack down on dating app users who violate policies.

According to News.com, dating app users who “harass, threaten, or share unwanted explicit photos” could have their accounts terminated across multiple platforms at the same time, intended to create a safer space overall for online dating. Seventy-five percent of companies operating in Australia have signed on to the new industry standard, including Match Group (which operates Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid among others), Bumble and Grindr.

A recurring problem with dating apps is user safety, specifically surrounding the growing number of users who receive unsolicited images. If a perpetrator is banned from one platform, they can easily move on to other platforms, so the new safety standard is intended to prevent this from happening.