The founder of the world’s most popular female focussed dating app has told the hundreds gathered at one of America’s top tech conferences that the future on online dating could include users’ AI avatars dating each other to determine compatibility.
Bumble founder and executive chair Whitney Wolfe Herd told the crowd at the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco on May 9 that AIs could help users process their emotional baggage and even spare them the awkwardness of dead-end first dates, according to a report by Fortune.
Bumble launched ten years ago as a rival to the world’s most popular dating app, Tinder, and distinguished itself by only allowing women to make the first move. Herd, a former Tinder employee, said she noticed that female users were often overwhelmed by unwanted male advances.
Bumble began to move away from its original women-first model early in 2024 with a new “Opening Moves” feature that allows men to initiate contact by answering pre-set questions, according to a Guardian report.
The idea Herd floated at the Bloomberg summit would go much further, with each user training an AI “concierge” that could vet potential matches for them. “If you want to get really out there, there is a world where your dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierge[s] … [so] you don’t have to talk to 600 people. It will scan all of San Francisco for you and say: ‘These are the three people you really out to meet,'” she told the crowd, drawing laughter.
The 31 Year Old Founder Of Bumble Is The Newest Member Of The Billionaires Club https://t.co/eKRnvjwlpv pic.twitter.com/T4Uv6KDzCS
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Herd launched her “feminist” alternative to Tinder following an acrimonious departure from the company where she claimed to have been sexually harrassed. Parent company Match Group settled the case for $1 million, but denied the allegation according to The Metro. Bumble floated on the stock market in 2021 immediately making Herd one of the youngest female billionaires in America.
