Bumble Taps AI to Take Sting Out of Catfishing

Bumble is employing artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure its dating profiles aren’t, well, artificial.

“Our most recent research made one thing very clear: our members are anxious about the authenticity of their matches,” the company said Monday (Feb 5). “Worldwide, respondents cited fake profiles and the risk of scams as their top concerns when online dating.”

According to the announcement, 46% of women surveyed said their main issue while dating online was not knowing if the person they’re in contact with is who they say they are.

To help ease those fears, Bumble has introduced Deception Detector, which uses AI to weed out fake, spam or scam profiles. Bumble said its testing has shown the tool was able to block 95% of these bogus accounts automatically.

“Others will go through a verification process to ensure they’re authentic, and could be removed from Bumble altogether,” the announcement said. “This Deception Detector AI model is supported by our dedicated team of human moderators, who prioritize our community’s safety above all.”

This isn’t Bumble’s first artificial intelligence offering. The company in December introduced AI-powered conversation starters for its Bumble for Friends service, to make it easier for users to launch conversations with new friends by generating personalized icebreaker questions based on the recipient’s profile.

Bumble has also spoken of the concept of using AI chatbot technology as a dating coach, as noted here last August.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS has examined the use of AI to ferret out other forms of fraud, following a year in which losses from this crime rose by about 65% from $2.3 million in 2022 to $3.8 million in 2023.

To address this problem, financial institutions (FIs) have had to elevate their existing defenses and embrace advanced technologies, with 71% of FIs using both AI and machine learning (ML) to upgrade their fraud-fighting capabilities.

As Tobias Schweiger, CEO and co-founder of Hawk AI, said in an interview with PYMNTS, “the application of [AI] isn’t just reserved for the good guys … and bad actors are accelerating what I would call an arms race, using all of those technologies. As a financial institution, one has to be aware of that accelerated trend and make sure your organization has enough technology on the good side of the equation to fight back.”