FCIF: Grindr wants AI to completely change how you find your next date

Grindr CEO George Arison said at the Fast Company Innovation Festival that the company wants its app to be "AI native," with AI now writing more than 80% of the app's code and a premium tier called Edge expected to launch later this year or early next year. Arison said Grindr is considering an even more exclusive paid option that could cost more than $6,000 per year, while the company's workforce has declined about 20% over the past three years and hiring has slowed, though no jobs were cut because of AI. Grindr users spend an average of one hour per day in the app sending about 50 messages, and Arison said the goal is to eventually bring the AI features to all users.

Could AI https://www.fastcompany.com/section/artificial-intelligence actually make the online dating http://www.fastcompany.com/section/dating and hookup experience better? That’s what Grindr http://www.fastcompany.com/section/grindr , the LGBT-focused dating and social networking app, has been betting on in recent years as it debuts new features and prepares to roll out a paid premium tier offering dubbed Edge. And the company is so keen on the technology that it sees an opportunity for an even more exclusive paid option that could cost more than $6,000 per year. “We leaned into AI in a pretty dramatic way,” said the company’s CEO, George Arison, while speaking at the Fast Company Innovation Festival https://events.fastcompany.com/innovation-festival/ in New York. “We want the entire app to be AI http://www.fastcompany.com/section/AI native in terms of how people use it.” What does that mean for the millions of Grindr users who, on average, spend one hour in the app each day sending about 50 messages? Well, AI could provide more insight into potential matches, recommendations that are based on interests and not merely geography, and a better inbox experience. While many of the new AI-enabled features will be available solely to subscribers to Grindr’s Edge premium tier offering, which is expected to go live later this year or early next year, Arison said the goal is to eventually democratize them to all users. “Ultimately, I want the free product to be extremely robust and I want people coming back to the app as much as possible,” he said. And though Grindr hasn’t made any job http://www.fastcompany.com/section/jobs cuts because of AI, Arison noted, the West Hollywood-based company has slowed down hiring https://www.fastcompany.com/section/hiring and its workforce has declined by about 20% in the past three years. But a leaner workforce is able to beef up its features thanks to its use of AI tools, which now writes more than 80% of code for the app, he added. That increase in productivity https://www.fastcompany.com/section/productivity has upended a once-familiar product for Arison, a longtime tech executive who has been building software for the past two decades. “Always the problem was: I don’t have enough engineers to build the stuff I want to build,” he said. “Now, I don’t have enough product managers to manage the products that I want to build while engineers have excess capacity to build stuff.” “I do think there is a world in which we’ll have a product even more expensive than $6,000 a year at an even more premium level for an even smaller segment of people,” Arison said. “That will probably be something that combines in-app features and out of the app experiences for the more premium lifestyle experience for gay http://www.fastcompany.com/section/gay men.”