Meta reminds the world about Facebook Dating by launching new features
Facebook is primarily about staying in touch with people, but Facebook Dating is about starting relationships. It seems unlikely that Facebook is the first place people think of when it comes to finding partners, and Meta has just decided to add new features to Facebook Dating and use it as a reason to remind the world of its existence.
Despite the rather older demographic that Facebook generally attracts, Meta says that “hundreds of thousands of young adults in the US and Canada create Facebook Dating profiles every month”. It is for these people that a dating assistant and Meet Cute feature are being added.
Meta says that both of these features are rolling out in a bid to “avoid swipe fatigue”. While there is no explicit mention of artificial intelligence when Meta describes its new dating assistant, the look, feel and description haves a distinctly AI smell:
Dating assistant is a chat assistant within Facebook Dating that gives you personalized help on your dating journey.
It can help you find better matches based on your interests and preferences, giving you refined search and custom match recommendations. The assistant allows users to go beyond traditional traits like height or education, allowing you to enter unique prompts tailored to what you’re looking for. For example, you can write “Find me a Brooklyn girl in tech” and the dating assistant will help you with your search. You can use the assistant to provide dating ideas or help you level up your profile.
You can find your dating assistant by heading to the Matches tab. Dating assistant will begin rolling out gradually in the US and Canada.
The suggestion that “you can use the assistant to provide dating ideas or help you level up your profile” throws up various concerns about misrepresentation or dishonesty, but this can almost be considered par for the course with dating apps.
But Meta has more, in the form of Meet Cute – which has an horrific name, and something of a creepy description:
Meet Cute is a feature that takes the indecision out of online dating by automatically matching you with a surprise match based on our personalized matching algorithm. Choose to chat with your match or unmatch to pass on the conversation.
Meet Cute is ideal for anyone who’s tired of swiping and is looking for a fresh, easy way to expand their typical pool of dating candidates.
To start, Meet Cute matches will be made weekly and we’re exploring adding the option of other frequencies. You can opt-out of the feature at any time.