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Facebook Dating users can now ask an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot to find them “a Brooklyn girl in tech” instead of swiping through endless profiles, as Meta launches two features Monday aimed at combating dating app burnout.
The social media platform rolled out its AI dating assistant and a weekly “surprise match” feature, called Meet Cute, to users in the United States and Canada. Both tools let users skip the swiping ritual that defines most dating apps.
Source: Meta
“People are really tired of swiping through hundreds of profiles to eventually get to a match and a date,” said Neha Kumar, a product manager on Facebook Dating, in an interview with Business Insider. “We’re trying to figure out: How can we tackle this challenge that is pretty pervasive in dating?”
The AI assistant works through natural language prompts. Users type requests into a chat interface within the Matches tab.
“You could say, ‘find someone that I could bring home to my parents’ or ‘find a Brooklyn tech bro who would go to EDM concerts with me’ and it’ll sift through all of the people in our ecosystem and find the right person for you,” Kumar explained. The chatbot searches only public profile information, she added, noting that “it’s not pulling implied info.”
Meet Cute takes a different route. Once weekly, the feature delivers one algorithmically selected match to each user. They can choose to chat or pass.
Meta built the assistant using its Llama language models. The company emphasized that Facebook Dating remains completely free, unlike its competitors, which charge for premium features.
Meta reports that hundreds of thousands of 18-to-29-year-olds create Facebook Dating profiles monthly in North America. Matches in that age group rose 10% year over year. Yet these numbers pale against established players like Tinder, which claims 50 million daily active users. Hinge has around 10 million.
The entire dating app sector faces pressure. Match Group’s stock dropped 68% over the past five years, despite investing over $20 million in AI features across Tinder, Hinge, and OkCupid. Bumble reported a decline in paying users last month.
Meta plans an aggressive marketing campaign targeting younger users. Tiffany Lin, a product marketing manager, told Business Insider the company will run a “taildating” experience at October’s State Fair of Texas to promote the new features.
This isn’t Meta’s first attempt at AI-powered dating help. The company deleted an AI dating coach named “Carter” in 2023 after users complained it “kink-shamed” them.
Whether an AI assistant truly solves swipe fatigue or merely repackages the same matching process through a chatbot remains unclear. Users still face the fundamental challenge of digital dating: finding genuine connections through algorithms and profiles.