How are dating apps turning on AI for their users?

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently gave a leg up to dating apps when he announced that he met his spouse Rama Duwaji on the dating platform Hinge. Soon enough, several users of the Match Group-owned dating app, even in India, said they were looking for their own Zohran Mamdani-style match ‘made in heaven’. Hinge, unlike its sibling app Tinder, seeks to foster slower, thoughtful, and meaningful connections, based on its advertising.

Whether your dating app of choice is the fast-paced Tinder, the relatively more conscious Hinge, the women-centric Bumble, or even a traditional Indian matrimony platform, all these apps have made AI a core part of their product to help users find compatible partners.

Your AI romance assistant

Over the past few years, to help users overcome “swiping fatigue” post the COVID-19 pandemic, dating apps have been deploying AI to both improve the overall user experience and help shy users kickstart conversations. These companies see Gen AI as a tool to make digital dating feel more comfortable, personalised, and interesting.

For example, the Match Group in its Q3 report for the third quarter ended September 30, 2025, outlined an AI-powered feature called Chemistry that can look at users’ device photos to understand them better.

“Powered by AI, this Interactive Matching feature, now known as Chemistry, is a major pillar of Tinder’s upcoming 2026 product experience. It gets to know users through interactive questions and, with permission, learns from their camera roll to better understand their interests and personality. Using deep learning, Chemistry combats “swipe fatigue” by surfacing a few highly relevant profiles each day, driving more compatible matches and engaging conversations,” the company said, adding that “Chemistry” was live in New Zealand and Australia, and there are plans to expand the feature to more countries in the coming months.

But such features require the user to provide more personal information to the platform.

“Users essentially give license to these companies to utilize these photos for whatever purposes they deem fit now and in the future. The benefits offered here don’t outweigh the privacy risks from enabling this experimental AI feature,” explained Satnam Narang, Senior Staff Research Engineer at Tenable.

Lisa Steinfeld, a data protection lawyer at noyb—European Center for Digital Rights, a Vienna-based non-profit, noted that AI systems appeared as “black boxes” for users who cannot easily understand how their data will be processed and whether this will be in compliance with existing laws.

“Another factor to consider is that Tinder will have to collect users’ valid consent. This supposes that users are informed and [in agreement] to the processing. Specific and accessible information is therefore crucial, especially since people’s camera rolls can include sensitive photos which could for example reveal sex life, sexual orientation, political or philosophical beliefs,” said Steinfeld.

Risks include AI hallucinations, inaccuracy, lack of a legal basis, unfairness, and the impossibility of exercising one’s rights, she added.

Last year, noyb filed a complaint against Bumble, alleging that the app’s “AI Icebreakers” feature, powered by ChatGPT to help initiate conversations between contacts on the ‘Bumble for Friends’ offering, were breaking EU laws.

“In order to do this, your personal profile information is fed into the AI system without Bumble ever obtaining your consent. Although the company repeatedly shows you a banner designed to nudge you into clicking “Okay”, which suggests that it relies on user consent, it actually claims to have a so-called “legitimate interest” to use data,” stated the organisation.

“Chatfishing” and chafed feelings

Dating platforms aren’t the only ones experimenting with Gen AI. Users are also bringing their Gen AI prowess to the platforms with fake profiles built using image generators that fool both the site and other users.

If that wasn’t complex enough to handle, more users on dating apps are stealthily using AI chatbots such as ChatGPT to flirt with potential matches, keep conversations running, sound fluent in a non-native language, and get feedback on the best ways to respond to texts. This has led to a trend known as ‘Chatfishing,” or a form of catfishing where daters use AI to create an enticing but false persona online. Meanwhile, those receiving visibly AI-generated messages on dating apps feel disrespected, frustrated, or deceived.

The Google Play Store even lists third-party apps designed to provide AI assistance to those wanting to secure dates. One such app, called ‘WingAI: Your AI Wingman,’ declared itself a “secret weapon to get Same Day Dates.” It invited users to upload other people’s dating app bios and chats in order to generate AI responses to send back to them.

Tenable’s Narang stressed the dangers of potential romance-baiting scams, known as pig butchering scams, where users looking for love end up getting defrauded.

“We’ve seen fake profiles on dating apps using AI-generated images in the early part of 2024. Since the generative AI models have been improving exponentially, the fake profiles on these dating apps are only getting harder to spot,” he said.

“For dating app users, the red flag warnings they should watch out for is a rush to move off platform (to SMS, WhatsApp and other messaging apps) to continue the conversation and telling the user about their significant gains in financial or cryptocurrency complete with faked screenshots of dashboards,” Narang explained.

While swiping through a dating app is often touted as a safe alternative that allows matches to privately vet each other before a first meeting, digital daters now need to be on the lookout for far more red flags than ever before. With AI tools in play—both behind the scenes and on stage—users looking for a Zohran Mamdani-style match must, perhaps, think of a new way to build trust through these connections.

Published – February 06, 2026 08:16 am IST