Tinder plans to let machine vision algorithms loose on your camera roll. Instead of building a profile on their own, AI will scan users’ locally-stored photos—everything from gym selfies to pictures of their family, sensitive documents and dick pics—to help construct profiles by determining what users’ interests and values are.
Dating apps are the go-to way for people to connect romantically in the modern dating world. As AI has risen in popularity thanks to services like ChatGPT, however, users are suffering the consequences of problems like bots and AI-generated messages infiltrating dating apps. For some people, the experience is less authentic than ever as people offload get-to-know-you conversations to artificial intelligence.
The feature is still being tested, with early access only available in Australia beginning this month. Although Tinder says it attempts to filter out explicit images, users may still be concerned with Tinder’s AI scanning their entire camera roll. “It’s up to you to figure out what you’re comfortable sharing back with Tinder,” Tinder Head of Product Mark Kantor told 404 Media. Still, users can’t pick individual photos they want analyzed or ignored. Tinder’s safeguards are meant to filter out explicit images or text, and to blur faces before insights are processed.
Tinder claims its AI is looking for themes and interests, like pets, activities, or food, as well as photos that are well-lit or well-framed. In theory, this will help users decide the best way to present themselves online. “There is some art to it,” Kantor said. “It’s not just the science.” (It’s unclear what happens if your camera roll is full of bad photos.)
Eventually, Kantor said, Tinder will add the ability to turn photos into larger collages for their profiles. “We do give people a pretty big variety of photos so we’re not going to go from 30,000 to three.” Kantor said it looks for subject matter and tries to group insights based on similar interests. “If I have one dog photo of 20,000, I’m not really a dog person,” Kantor said as an example.
Tinder has already leaned heavily into AI. Kantor told 404 Media that artificial intelligence is writing more than half the app’s code these days. Several of its new AI-driven features include photo enhancements, match recommendations, and photo scanning. Kantor said that the app’s use of AI is to “help you express yourself,” but not to do so on the dater’s behalf.
If the camera roll is a window into the modern soul, it is also a goldmine of personal information. Depending on what someone photographs, their camera roll could include everything from photos of sensitive documents, like banking or medical info, to nudes. It’s a potential security nightmare, especially when people are sharing intimate details about themselves or their dating lives. Security failures on dating apps like Tea put users in danger: multiple breaches exposed personal information, including photos, driver’s license information, and direct messages, before it was finally yanked from the App Store. Tinder has had its own privacy and security issues. Last year, we revealed the dating app was one of thousands co-opted to mine location data. In January, hackers claimed to have stolen internal data from Match Group, which owns Tinder.
According to Kantor, Tinder isn’t storing the data it pulls from photos on its end. “It’s purely on your device,” he said. Tinder won’t scan your deleted photos, or anything from your phone’s hidden folder; after it’s finished scouring your images, the AI selects specific photos for users to choose to upload to their public profile. If the AI’s categorization of a user as, say, a dog person is inaccurate, users can note that feedback and choose to either accept or reject the AI’s insights. Anything that doesn’t go on someone’s profile is deleted, and if users want new insights later, they’ll have to do the process all over again, according to Tinder.
“In talking to this new generation of daters, they want something different,” Kantor told 404 Media.“I think you see connection, that hasn’t changed. I don’t think they’re frustrated with dating. They’re frustrated with all of the friction and the dead ends with dating.”
Megan Farokhmanesh is a games and culture reporter whose works has appeared in the New York Times, Wired, Axios, and The Verge. Find her on Bluesky.
