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Founder: Carly Malatskey of Joey AI. (Photo by David Sprague)<\/p>\nWhen Carly Malatskey worked at venture firm Floodgate, she was dubbed \u201cthe dating app guru.\u201d<\/p>\n
Malatskey immediately received all proposals for dating app companies. She handled everything from filling out a 200-answer questionnaire to sifting through pitches advertised as \u201cHinge with a twist.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I would see all of these dating startups at Floodgate, they were all truly a copy-paste of Bumble, Hinge and Tinder with a slight nuance,\u201d Malatskey said. \u201cBut the nuance was never that remarkable because fundamentally the issue is still the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
In February, Malatskey founded Joey AI, an artificial intelligence-based matchmaking company based in Santa Monica. The firm isn\u2019t necessarily a dating app. Users call a phone number, and an AI voice assistant \u2013 known as Joey \u2013 asks several questions before bidding them a good day and hanging up. There\u2019s no profile to create. There\u2019s no app to scroll on. One day, Joey may text a user when it thinks it has found a good match, and if both people are interested, it will connect them via text.<\/p>\n
Founder: Carly Malatskey of Joey AI. (Photo by David Sprague)<\/p>\n
So-called \u201cdating app fatigue\u201d \u2013 caused by confusing social rules, self-imposed pressures to look good and the endless cycle of fragile connections failing \u2013 is hurting companies\u2019 financial results. In March, Bumble Inc. reported a 10% year-over-year revenue decline, attributed to waning engagement and fewer paid users. At Match Group, which owns West Hollywood-based Tinder Inc., total revenue was flat year over year.<\/p>\n
However, it looks like artificial intelligence could be the key to reviving the struggling sector. Around 10% of all dating app companies are using AI today, according to PitchBook. As users find it harder to connect on dating apps, companies as big as Tinder and Grindr Inc. and as small as the nascent Joey AI are experimenting with the technology to make the process easier.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe point isn\u2019t \u2018AI\u2019 for its own sake,\u201d Grindr Chief Executive George Arison said in a statement. \u201cIt\u2019s fewer dead ends, less noise and more real connections.\u201d<\/p>\n
At Tinder, Chief Executive Spencer Rascoff is acutely aware that users are experiencing swipe fatigue. Founded in 2012, Tinder is a pioneer in the dating app space, but it quickly has seen its popularity dwindle as other companies have launched their own competing apps.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur 2026 product roadmap at Tinder directly addresses the most common Gen Z pain points,\u201d Rascoff said during quarterly earnings in March. \u201cThey want better outcomes, so we\u2019re focusing on relevant match quality. They want authenticity and trust, so we\u2019re further strengthening verification and safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
In March, Tinder unveiled a slew of AI product features aimed at combating its decline in users, including Chemistry. The feature uses AI to determine how compatible users are and to glean more information about a person by analyzing their photos.<\/p>\n
\u201cChemistry is an AI way to interact with Tinder and answer questions in order to then get just a single drop or two rather than swiping through many, many profiles,\u201d Rascoff said. \u201cIt\u2019s also a way to connect your camera roll to Tinder and then let Tinder draw out insights from your camera roll. And today, that\u2019s in service of driving a custom AI-driven recommendation drop.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company also rolled out safety features that use AI to detect potentially harmful language in messages users may send or receive, as well as blur images that might be unwanted for the recipient.<\/p>\n
Though Tinder\u2019s fourth-quarter direct revenue was down 3%, with paid users declining by 8%, Rascoff said during earnings that it\u2019s a necessary trade-off to make long-term improvements to the platform. When Rascoff took the reins of Dallas, Texas-based Match Group in 2025, he also appointed himself chief executive of Tinder to fix the struggling platform, which at the time was the largest contributor to Match Group\u2019s revenue decline, according to earnings reports.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re expanding the ways that people get started \u2013 from new formats and real-world experiences to profiles that help show who you really are,\u201d Rascoff said in a statement. \u201cWe\u2019re using AI to surface more relevant connections and continuing to raise the bar on safety so that people feel confident taking the next step.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Joey does away with profiles and swiping altogether. When users call Joey, it asks a handful of questions: \u201cWhat time did you wake up today? How often did you work out this week? Are you the person who makes all the plans in your friend group, or are you more \u2018go with the flow\u2019? Where do you buy your groceries from?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI talked to a few relationship scientists while building Joey,\u201d Malatskey said. \u201c(One) said, \u2018I think I know more about a person based (on) a grocery store they go to than probably anything on a Hinge profile.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
What kind of information does Joey distill from a user who says they shop at, say, an Erewhon? That\u2019s part of the backend, Malatskey said. She aims to use voice AI to shift users away from heavily curated profiles, which she says impede authenticity.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can now talk and convey who you are by being asked the right questions,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can share the nuance, and Joey can now get the nuance.\u201d<\/p>\n
AJ Balance, Grindr\u2019s chief product officer, doesn\u2019t like to call the company a dating app.<\/p>\n
Though Grindr began serving the queer dating community in 2009, the company has since expanded to accommodate the many ways users have come to use the platform.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started as a dating app for casual dating. But now our users use it for dating, to make friends, to make companions when they travel,\u201d Balance said. \u201cBecause users are seeking casual connections, long-term relationships, travel tips, ways to meet up with people when they\u2019re exploring your city or traveling in other cities, we are building a set of features across those different use cases.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Platform: AJ Balance is the chief product officer of Grindr. (Photo by Rich Schmitt)<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where AI comes in. Because users have different intentions on Grindr, the company has to create specific offerings for each person on the app. One of Grindr\u2019s AI functions, Wingman, helps users find people who are looking for the same thing they are. Wingman can suggest profile improvements or conversation starters.<\/p>\n
The company also built a product called Smart Inbox, which prioritizes what it believes are the most compatible connections at the top. There\u2019s also an A-List, which is a curated list of a user\u2019s favorite people to talk to on the app.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a lot of conversations happening,\u201d Balanche said. \u201cAnd for something like A-List, we can summarize those conversations and actually help you figure out, from all the people you\u2019ve talked to, who\u2019s a really great fit and stay in touch with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eighty-two percent of Gen Z American daters are already using AI in some form while dating, according to a 2025 report by the dating app Hily, whether to spruce up a profile, start a conversation, or get general advice about a predicament. That tracks \u2013 dating apps received $3.5 billion in venture funding in 2025, all of which use AI in their product.<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially with AI and dating, I think the opportunity is there, and we\u2019re in a whole new wave of dating, but there\u2019s so much noise surrounding it,\u201d said Malatskey. \u201cAt the core, we just want people to meet more people that they can connect with.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Carly Malatskey worked at venture firm Floodgate, she was dubbed \u201cthe dating app guru.\u201d Malatskey immediately received…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,440,441,442],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-grindr","tag-joey-ai","tag-tinder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}