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Hinge unleashed "AI-powered coaching" this week in an attempt to reduce the number of lame dating profiles on the app.
"Scrolling through dating apps and seeing the same clichés? You’re not alone," Hinge says. "On Hinge, 27% of all Prompts are just one word, and 63% of daters admit they struggle to know what to write."
When someone is crafting a response to a question, the new system reads their draft and provides three levels of feedback.
- “Great Answer”
- “Try a Small Change”
- “Go a Little Deeper”
(Credit: Hinge)It could be discouraging to have an AI critique your answers, arbitrating what's "good" or "bad" in this highly personal realm. It may also encourage a new type of throw-away response to get a good rating. When daters arrive at the bar or coffee shop, they could find themselves discussing something they wrote just to get the AI off their backs.
However, Hinge says the goal is to boost interesting, authentic responses. Its AI coach won't make any changes or suggest specific language. In one example, where a dater types "everything" for the "I'm overly competitive about" prompt, the AI tells them to: "Try sharing a specific activity you compete in; it adds depth and invites conversation. What's your favorite competition?"
Hinge claims that "liked" text prompts were 47% more likely to lead to a date than "likes" on photos in 2024. If people have no idea what to write, it could hinder their chances.
It's also possible Hinge will use this new data to internally rank profiles based on the quality of their answers, and not surface low-ranking profiles. Those users could feel "shadow banned," as Gizmodo writes, in a possible effort from Hinge to get them to either improve their answers or pay for a premium subscription. Some Hinge users suspect the app hides quality matches until a user pays, but the app denies doing so, and tells PCMag it has no plans to use the new AI program to do so.