Bumble to launch an AI dating assistant, ‘Bee’

Dating app maker Bumble is venturing into generative AI. During the company’s fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, Bumble introduced a new AI assistant it’s calling “Bee,” designed to become a personal matchmaker that learns users’ “values, relationship goals, communication style, lifestyle, and dating intentions” through private chats. It then uses those insights to help find the user more relevant matches.

Currently, Bee is in the pilot phase and being tested internally, founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd told investors, but it’s launching into beta soon.

With Bee, the company envisions being able to capture much more information about Bumble users, as it learns more about each individual’s story and what they really want. This could differentiate Bumble’s app from others like Tinder, which also just underwent an overhaul as the dating app market has fizzled with Gen Z users.

Bumble says users will interact with Bee much like they do with other AI chatbots, through typing and speaking in a more conversational style.

Initially, Bee will be used to power a new dating experience, called “Dates,” that uses AI to recommend matches; but in the future, Bumble says Bee will move into other areas, like offering date suggestions or requesting anonymous feedback from your prior matches.

In “Dates,” Bee will first learn about the user through a private, onboarding conversation. It then identifies two people who have shared intentions, values, and relationship goals. Both users are notified in the app with a description of why they make a great match.

The addition is part of a broader tech and AI-focused overhaul of the dating app, which to date has marketed itself as more focused on women’s needs. The company pioneered features like the “women message first,” body-shaming bans, and tools that blurred unsolicited explicit images, among others.

Now, it’s looking to use AI to return to user growth amid a dating market that sees younger users, particularly Gen Z, growing tired of the swipe.

In fact, Herd said that Bumble would experiment with removing the long-popular swipe mechanism in select markets to see how users react. Instead of prioritizing swipes as a binary “yes” or “no,” Bumble is looking to leverage other features, like new “chapter-based” profiles where members can connect with one another on different parts of a user’s life story. This will give Bumble more data to feed into its AI system and algorithms.

“We will be introducing more dynamic ways for somebody to express interest in your story, rather than just your profile, and this is going to drive more dynamic engagement, spark better conversation, and ultimately drive better KPIs across the board—like engagement and chances to get better conversations going,” Wolf Herde said. “You will also see us take a much more deliberate approach to getting people offline versus just in what people refer to as dead-end chat zones.”

The company is also looking into other ways to better cater to Gen Z, a cohort that often prefers group socializing over one-on-one dates to get to know people.

The company has been working to add AI to its app for years, rolling out changes like AI photo selection and feedback tools, for instance, as well as in areas like safety. Wolfe Herde told investors that Bumble’s back-end infrastructure had been overhauled as the app infused itself with AI.

The company reported better-than-expected earnings in Q4 with revenue of $224.2 million, and average revenue per paying user up 7.9% to $22.20. The stock rallied some 40% on the news.

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