Dating entrepreneur warns against AI relationships
Justin McLeod, CEO of Hinge (the dating app worth close to $3 billion), is worried about humans dating AI chatbots.
Users engaging romantically with AI chatbots could be "playing with fire", McLeod said on a podcast - The Decoder podcast by The Verge - claiming that AI could displace human relationships.
"I think there’s actually quite a clear line between providing a tool that helps people do something or get better at something, and the line where it becomes this thing that is trying to become your friend, trying to mimic emotions, and trying to create an emotional connection with you," McLeod said.
He draws parallels between AI dating chatbots and unhealthy food.
“While it will feel good in the moment, like junk food basically, to have an experience with someone who says all the right things and is available at the right time, it will ultimately, just like junk food, make people feel less healthy and more drained over time," he told Verge editor and podcast host Nilay Patel.
McLeod says 'human-to-human-in-real-life' relationships are "essential to the human experience and essential to mental health".
The Hinge boss, meanwhile, was more upbeat about the role AI can play in 'matchmaking' within dating apps, with the technology expected to find better and more compatible connections between its users (and, he says, helped drive a 15% increase in dates set up in the app).
In the 1 hour 07 minute podcast with Nilay Patel, McLoed also talks in depth about monetization in the dating industry, privacy norms, and 'the future of dating'.
McLeod founded Hinge, an innovation in dating apps which, unlike Tinder, seeks to match users based on common interests and other social signals, and show potential daters with a limited number of user profiles per day.
Hinge was sold to Match.com, which also owns Tinder, in 2019, via a $15 million deal, before growing under the listed umbrella to an estimated value of $2.8 billion, with revenues up to $550 million in 2024, from $8 million in 2018.
