- Hinge CEO Justin McLeod says AI might help us date smarter, but will never automate it altogether. He told Fortune he sees a future where AI acts more like a coach or matchmaker than a stand-in avatar, helping people understand themselves and their connections better. Hinge already has an AI-powered coaching feature that helps to give feedback on prompts to help daters improve their responses.
Hinge co-founder and CEO Justin McLeod is optimistic about AI’s potential to help us find love. The dating app boss told Fortune at Viva Technology in Paris that AI could function like a “personal matchmaker” to help users make “much more thoughtful, targeted introductions,” but that human intimacy will never be fully automated.
“We don’t want AI or chatbots or whatever to replace human connection or do the human connecting for us, but it can facilitate getting us out on a date, and then it can help point us in the right direction, and even help maybe coach us along the way,” McLeod said.
Dating apps have long used AI and machine learning algorithms to help group and score people. But since the AI boom, some apps are increasingly improving their functionality, from chatbots to acting as coaches or AI-improved ranking and compatibility prediction.
The introduction of some of these features has raised eyebrows, sparking concerns about trust and authenticity if dating apps are suddenly flooded with AI-curated or enhanced profiles.
Hinge already has an AI-powered coaching feature that offers feedback on prompts to help daters improve their responses.
But McLeod says he is keen to limit AI to this “coaching” role, in comparison to apps such as Tinder, which have rolled out an AI chatbot that can perform tasks from helping users decide which pictures to display to writing messages to potential matches.
Tinder and Hinge share a parent company in Match Group, which acquired a 51% stake in Hinge in June 2018, with the remaining shares purchased by the first quarter of 2019. Match Group has a market cap of $7.59 billion.
Streamline matchmaking
In McLeod’s view, the future of AI could streamline the matching element of dating, working as a service rather than a crutch for users.
“I think we’re going to move away from the world of feeling like you’re on a social platform hunting through hundreds, if not thousands, of people to find your person, to a world where you feel like you’re working with a personal matchmaker and you’re just getting a better sense of who you are,” he said.
“Technology is moving to a place where we can listen to you in your own words about your personality, your values, your interests,” he said.
However, he added that the technology was still in its early stages and could also negatively impact the broader context of human relationships, especially if left up to Big Tech with minimal oversight.
“It’s so important for us to be building our own personal sense of values and wisdom, and what are we going to participate in, and what are we not going to participate in,” he said.
McLeod added that people shouldn’t cede control to technology creators, pointing to social media as an example of the harm that can be caused when tech companies develop products unchecked.
“If we look at the way social media happened as an example, the optimization function was engagement and retention and not belonging and connection, and we saw what that did to people’s mental health, to political polarization, and to everything else. And AI is going to be a supercharged version of that.”
