AI 'Wingman' Coming to Grindr in 2024
Ready to improve your game on Grindr? Users looking to find a little human connection will get some help from artificial intelligence — the company's CEO likens it to a digital "wingman" — starting in 2024, Bloomberg reports.
The popular hookup app will be partnering with AI tools company Ex-Human "to fuel the app company's in-house artificial intelligence capabilities and enhance the experience of its users," the company announced in a Dec. 14 press release.
"Through this new partnership, Grindr will thoughtfully leverage Ex-Human's foundational models and tools to build new, engaging features designed to support the wide range of networking and dating needs of its users, from casual encounters to longer-term relationships," the release added.
Company CEO George Arison, put things another way: "If we don't do it, someone else will."
Added Arison: "If you're not first to market with something in AI, you're going to miss out."
"Ex-human, a startup founded in 2021, makes customizable chatbots," Bloomberg noted. "The offerings on the company's consumer site, botify.ai, are heavily weighted toward virtual girlfriends and boyfriends: There's Geisha, Cinderella, Vampire, Vampiress and Elon Musk."
But how will that translate to an enhanced Grindr experience?
"Users send 50 million messages a month to Botify AI interlocutors, according to the company," Bloomberg backgrounded. "All of those interactions help train Ex-human's algorithm to better flirt — at least with the self-selected community of people who flirt with chatbots."
Does that mean that a Grindr AI will be the one asking things like, "Sup?"
"Arison declined to specify what tools [the partnership] might yield," Bloomberg relayed, "but one thing he does talk about is a kind of dating assistant."
Or, as Arison put it, "There's a concept of something I internally call 'Grindr wingman'." Bloomberg explained that such a digital "wingman" could help a guy out by "suggest[ing] a restaurant to take a date to or select[ing] music based on a person's profile that they might find aphrodisiacal if and when they come up for a drink."
If that sounds a little stalker-y, consider this: The digital assistant might "propose a few options for how to respond to incoming messages from prospective matches," Bloomberg added.
"And then there's a lot more you can do beyond that," Arison teased, leaving anything more to the imagination.
It's a future that's already here, Bloomberg detailed, pointing out aht "Tinder is testing similar tools. It now suggests messages in its chat interface and is looking to use generative AI to write profile descriptions."
A little skepticism is to be expected, though.
"The privacy implications of all of this are straightforward," Bloomberg noted. "The data that users of sites like Grindr entrust to the platforms are deeply personal.
"To address these concerns," the article went on to add, "Arison said the Ex-human bot will be integrated into Grindr in a way that ensures user data stays with Grindr, and told the press, "we feel good about our infrastructure, and we do a lot of work to ensure that it's safe."
That doesn't mean the new tech might not be a little glitchy at first.
"We're going to get to market fast," Arison acknowledged, before saying that users will, at first, be "getting something that's 80% there but not 100% there."
How will the "digital wingman" enhance Grindr users' experience and, perhaps more importantly, results? The only way to know is to test it out. If nothing else, it could make for some fun stories later on.