Lonely hearts may soon be able to outsource the emotional exhaustion of dating to an “AI concierge”. Bumble’s founder, Whitney Wolfe Herd, suggests that AI personas will virtually date prospective partners’ bots and weed out any bad matches. Users could technically “date” hundreds of people at something close to the speed of light, then receive a list of matches who might be worth leaving the house to meet in person. The proposal follows Bumble’s decision to ditch its signature requirement for women to make the first move. Now it seems personalised AI chatbots could soon be making all the moves for us. With luck this will go down better with users than another recent Bumble attempt to navigate modern dating: its billboard ads this week mocking celibacy led to a swift apology.
