Looking at the examples on the second link, it feels creepy. Granted, I’m not a Grindr user; I’m not even male. If there are gay guys interested in having AI in their app, more power to them. But as a human, I don’t like the idea of an app trying to decide what I like about people instead of letting me put in my preferences for myself. Imagine realizing that you’ve gotten yourself into a bad pattern of dating people who are toxic for you and the app decides, “Hey, since you liked talking to people who have traits of X, Y, and Z, we’re going to suggest more people like that!”

Or, shockingly, you’re into people of diverse stripes, and find the most satisfying experiences to be novel ones. Well, too bad, the AI’s going to assume your past patterns should inform your future patterns, so prepare to be assigned to a niche you can’t opt out of.

“Over the course of a year, You [sic] and Eli had an on-again, off-again conversation that swung between flirty, honest, awkward, and quietly intimate.” Wow, thanks for the creepy stalking of my personal conversations, that totally makes me feel more comfortable. Imagine all those chats culminated in a bad time with Eli and that’s why you stopped talking to him, but the app keeps suggesting that since you had some fun times earlier on, that means you should totally try again. An app doing the work of a pushy ex without being told to. Or maybe your interactions went the other way, and you and Eli now text and meet-up regularly in the real world. But the app doesn’t know that, so it keeps telling you to reach out through their own platform.

Either way, I’m a grown adult capable of identifying my own preferences and making my own dating decisions. It makes me uncomfortable to imagine an AI trying to make those calls for me. Although I’m not their target audience, I wouldn’t be surprised if plenty of Grindr users feel similarly.