Bumble is growing its investments in AI and branching out with new options to remain related amid a generational shift in relationship habits amongst youthful customers. Throughout Goldman Sachs’ annual expertise convention on Monday, Bumble CEO Lidiane Jones unveiled extra particulars concerning the app’s upcoming AI capabilities, together with a photograph choice instrument in addition to options to assist with conversations and profile creation.
Jones beforehand teased the options in Bumble’s newest earnings presentation.
Throughout a name with traders, she stated, “We will also introduce new AI-driven features, including an AI-assisted photo picker to ease the profile creation process and conversation support that will help our customers gain confidence to be their best selves. We have an ambitious view of how AI will enhance the value we deliver to our customers in each step of the dating journey for profile creation, discovery, engagement, and the core of our matching models.”
The brand new AI-powered options are launching on the app this winter.
Bumble’s photograph picker instrument will put it in nearer competitors with Tinder, which launched its AI “Photo Selector” characteristic this summer season, offering customers with instructed selfies taken from their digicam roll. Tinder at present touts 9.6 million paying customers, whereas Bumble has 2.8 million customers as of Q2 2024.
Primarily based on yesterday’s feedback made by Jones, the corporate suggests it’s additionally engaged on extra instruments to assist with profile creation, however didn’t go into particular element.
“We want the bar for profile creation to continue to be high, but we want to reduce the friction that it exists for users. Users have a lot of anxiety in creating profiles. We’re going to make that as smooth as possible. So profile creation is a big one,” Jones famous through the convention.
There’s extra than simply importing images that go into making a profile; customers should additionally give you a compelling bio and prompts to draw potential matches. How Bumble plans to energy this expertise with AI for now stays unclear. Bumble didn’t reply to our request for remark.
If Bumble had been to launch extra AI profile creation options, the corporate could copy a characteristic from Tinder’s future product roadmap. Tinder CPO Mark Van Ryswyk as soon as talked about the thought of utilizing generative AI to put in writing bios for relationship profiles.
Moreover, utilizing AI to encourage singles to be extra artistic with their opening traces looks like a no brainer for Bumble. Final yr, the corporate launched an AI-generated icebreaker characteristic for Bumble for Buddies, its friendship-focused product, so it might make sense if the relationship app rolled out an identical characteristic. With the icebreaker characteristic, customers can generate messages primarily based on the opposite individual’s profile.
Jones stated, “[Another] big factor is customers are much happier and successful, and they engage in healthy conversations with each other. So, we want to provide more support for people to enter healthy conversations.”
Along with the newly introduced AI options, we could count on Bumble to broaden its AI strategy additional sooner or later. Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd beforehand shared that her concept of on-line relationship might see AI “dating concierges” or assistants happening quite a few dates on a person’s behalf.
In the meantime, Bumble has been utilizing AI to energy its security options for just a few years now. As an illustration, its “Deception Detector” instrument detects and removes faux profiles, spammers, and scammers, and its “Private Detector” characteristic robotically blurs nude images. Extra lately, the corporate launched a brand new possibility that lets members report profiles in the event that they consider the images and movies are generated with using AI.
Jones reiterated on the convention that Bumble is holding off on launching any new paid options because it continues to enhance the free expertise. This consists of increasing “Opening Moves,” including extra curiosity filters and customizations for its chat timer (which at present solely provides customers 24 hours to ship a message), in addition to improving its matching algorithm.
The corporate additionally has plans for the lately acquired neighborhood platform Geneva, which is gearing up for a relaunch in late fall.
