Key Takeaways

Gone are the days when dating apps were practically virtual rolodexes for aspiring daters to flip through. Now, people want dating apps to provide highly personalized match results that go above and beyond simple matchmaking, while keeping a respectful distance. 

happn is the latest dating app to acknowledge the industrywide trend toward personalization and hands-off AI with its new feature, Perfect Date.  

On its website, happn indicates that “72% of users say they’d be interested in a built-in feature to help them find the perfect place, based on their own tastes and their Crush’s. Perfect Date does just that.” Clearly, there’s a hungry demo of daters who crave AI’s helping hand. 

happn’s innovative use of AI points to a new generation of dating apps that use AI thoughtfully, without feeling artificial. 

Daters Want Personalized AI To Make IRL Connections  

AI tools of the past operated with a rule-based system, meaning they generated nonspecific responses based on the developer’s predetermined criteria. Today’s daters want a far more intuitive and personalized AI experience that can take their own preferences, location, and socialization needs into account. 

They want a virtual dating coach, not a robot. And daters need all the help they can get in today’s burgeoning “in-person dating” era. 

For the first time in over a decade, daters are leaning toward IRL meet-cutes and dates, and away from superficial, virtual connections. The only problem? Some of today’s daters have no clue how to begin planning an in-person date, or even what a real-life date entails. What they do understand is AI.

Daters want AI that bridges the gap between virtual and in-person connections.

“Perfect Date is fully aligned with happn’s mission — to help people connect in real life by making it easier and more natural to plan a date,” said to Karima Ben Abdelmalek, CEO & President of happn. 

happn has innovated to acknowledge Gen Z’s value of in-person dating and its value of personalized AI tech. 

AI and IRL connections may seem like an odd couple, but as we in the dating world know all too well, opposites attract. In fact, AI can pave the way for real-life relationships, something other modern dating app companies have noticed, too. 

Match Group recently held Hackathons at Hinge and Meetic to inspire new AI-fueled IRL dating ideas, and Hinge itself has invested over $1 million in in-person dating groups.  

Still, 44% of survey respondents told YouGov that they were concerned AI would lead to a dearth of human creativity and drive. Another 47% of surveyed Americans said they were concerned about AI leading to a decline of human oversight in decision-making.

 If AI is using a couple’s likes and dislikes to plan a thoughtful date, then what, exactly, are the humans doing — what are they learning and deciding about each other? 

Striking a Balance Between a Tool and a Takeover 

As Ben Abdelmalek, happn CEO, explained, AI can make the dating process easier without actually becoming a substitute for, well, a dater’s brain: 

“AI isn’t here to decide for singles, but to support them in creating real, personalised experiences after a Crush,” she said. 

Ideally, AI will foster a couple’s creativity by prompting ideation. If a dater tries to come up with a thoughtful, personalized date idea but comes up blank, AI can provide compelling prompts to help get the dater’s creative juices flowing. 

Alex Weitzman, the founder and CEO of Amori, a personal AI dating coach, emphasized AI’s potential as a confidence-building tool and as a self-improvement tool. He told DatingNews that AI shouldn’t simply do hard work for daters, but teach them how to successfully do the hard work themselves.

Bots that “message people for us” tend to “create false impressions and actually reduce our opportunity to reflect and improve on our relationships,” Weitzman said. Using AI as a skill-building tool and not as an emotional supplement can “improve our relationship skills and make them more authentic.”

This type of AI usage can reduce the modern fear of an “AI takeover.” The fear itself suggests that AI should merely lend a helping hand, not wield an unyielding fist. After all, relationships need human connection to thrive, not AI bots (the characters in Wall-E are an obvious exception). 

Dating app developers have the responsibility to strike a balance between helpful and hurtful AI tech — to help users without masking or diminishing the vital human touch.