Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder and executive chair of Bumble, the world's leading dating app for women, has proposed an intriguing vision for the future of online dating.
Speaking at the prestigious Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco on May 9, Herd suggested that artificial intelligence (AI) avatars could potentially date each other to gauge compatibility, as reported by Fortune.
Bumble, which was launched a decade ago as a competitor to Tinder, the globally renowned dating app, set itself apart by empowering women to initiate contact. Herd, a former Tinder employee, observed that female users frequently felt inundated with unsolicited advances from men.
In early 2024, Bumble began to deviate from its initial women-first approach by introducing the "Opening Moves" feature. This feature enables men to initiate conversations by responding to pre-set questions, as reported by The Guardian.
Herd's concept, shared at the Bloomberg summit, involves each user training an AI "concierge" to screen potential matches on their behalf. "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 ought to meet,'" she told the audience, eliciting laughter.
Herd launched Bumble as a "feminist" alternative to Tinder after a contentious exit from the company, where she alleged sexual harassment. The parent company, Match Group, settled the case for $1 million but denied the allegations, according to The Metro. Bumble's initial public offering in 2021 instantly made Herd one of the youngest female billionaires in the United States.
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