Struggling with online dating? Tinder wants to use AI to help with that—and it will only require access to every single photo on your phone.
The company recently announced several new features that center around artificial intelligence, including one that scans your camera roll and analyzes your pictures to offer "short descriptions of your interests, personality, or lifestyle" based on patterns it finds.
What are Tinder's new AI features?
The feature, called Photo Insights, can make suggestions as to which photos you should use for your Tinder profile. This is done by allowing it to use biometric data to recognize your face throughout your camera roll—something the company stresses is optional. If you want to use Photo Insights without biometric data, it warns that the photos it suggests might not include you at all.
The idea behind it seems to be that Tinder believes AI can do a better job of summing up who a person is than they can do on their own—or, at least, that it can do a decent enough job if the person doesn't want to be bothered.
These Photo Insights then feed into another new feature Tinder is offering, called Chemistry. Described as "AI-curated recommendations that cut through dating fatigue," Chemistry uses a mixture of Photo Insights, your Tinder bio, and additional preferences/questions to come up with information about you and highlight profiles it believes would be a good match.
What people are saying
In theory, it seems tantalizing to take the hassle out of swiping through countless profiles to find someone you might be interested in. There's also something to be said about the idea behind stepping out of the initial impression method Tinder was effectively built on, and trying to match on more than just liking a photo.
In practice, there's a lot more skepticism surrounding punting these things to AI, especially given the larger cultural context involving concerns over what rampant AI integration means for privacy, security, credibility, and accountability.
Here's a look at what folks are saying on X.
Tinder, AI, and privacy concerns
For the time being, Tinder is stressing that both Chemistry and Photo Insights are optional features. They've also offered insights as to how the data is accessed and subsequently used. For instance, they claim that your camera roll is analyzed on your own device and only "select photos" are uploaded to Tinder's servers. They also note that Photo Insights you don't keep "are deleted within 90 days and may be analyzed to help us improve the Photo Insights feature."
Of course, not everyone is willing to put blind trust in companies—or AI—to do as they claim. Others will undoubtedly happily offer access to anything on their phone in hopes of finding love (or a good hookup). And if something goes wrong? Well, what's a little bit more compromised data to add to the heaping pile companies have already misused or failed to safeguard for us, right?
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