Grindr’s New AI ‘Wingman’ Trained to ‘Sound Gay’

Grindr’s new AI chatbot they’re calling your “wingman” is trained to “sound gay” by learning queer slang. 

The vision for this new wingman is to be able to do more than just chat with you. It can help you keep track of conversations with your “favorite” people, give you match suggestions, find deal breakers by looking into the profiles of potential matches, suggest new date spots, and even make restaurant reservations.

Currently the AI is not fully operational. It’s still part of a trial run with a select few beta testers. But CEO of Grindr, George Arison, says that group will expand to include 1,000 people by the end of 2024 and 10,000 by the end of 2025.

“I always knew that AI was going to be a really big deal, and as we saw where generative AI was going, I realized, ‘A lot of this extension stuff can actually be done by AI,’” Arison says.

In order to create this AI’s gaysona, Grindr is partnering with “empathetic generative AI” company Ex-human. They’ll be tasked with helping the bot learn queer slang to “make it more gay.”

Arison tells the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that his main concern is ensuring user privacy will be respected, unlike past privacy related controversies. Back in 2018, BuzzFeed reported that the company sold access to user’s HIV status and location information to two third-party marketing companies. In 2022, Grindr had to pay fines for user privacy leaks in Europe, and the app was banned altogether in China. 

Grindr isn’t the only company incorporating AI into their dating apps. Bumble, Tinder, and Hinge are all using AI to help users and developers. AI helps users do things like picking a profile image, and it helps developers filter out fake accounts.

Grindr’s new AI isn’t the only queer AI on the market either. Start up company Healthvana is launching its drag queen AI chatbot to help people get answers to their questions about HIV. It’s already being licensed to health care facilities across the U.S.

Image from UnSplash