A new dating app has arrived, and it'll finally land you a date with your celebrity crush ... kind of. The app — Dating AI — uses face search technology to help you search for potential love interests that resemble a celebrity you're attracted to.
That's right folks, Dating AI is taking "I have a type" to whole new levels. Get ready for the most aesthetically niche search for love you could imagine.
To use Dating AI, you have to log in to your Facebook account. Fortunately, you don't have to worry about your friends seeing your activity because the app isn't able to post to your Facebook.
Once you're in, you can select a face from Dating AI's photo library of celebrity faces. If you want to pay for the Pro Subscription, you can take and upload an image, select a photo from your library, or choose a photo from Facebook. If you're a little narcissistic, you can even upload an image of yourself and ask out your own lookalike.
To find your celebrity dream date, upload or select an image of a face you're attracted to reveal photos of that person's doppelgangers. Dating AI pulls images of users with accounts on Tinder, Match, Plenty of Fish, and other popular platforms, so it has tons of people to choose from. You can scroll through hundreds of images until you find one that makes your heart stop — or at least most closely resembles your famous crush.
The app's facial recognition technology works fairly well, although I definitely found that some of its suggestions are way off base. I'd say it's decent at what it does, so you could be successful in finding the Justin Bieber to your Selena Gomez or — to reference a couple that's still together — the Zayn Malik to your Gigi Hadid. Unfortunately, you can only view people's full profiles if you have the Pro Subscription. You can get a one week free trial, but after that you'll have to shell out $7.99 each month if you're dying to learn more about your dream date's lookalike.
In an exclusive interview with Gadget Hacks, Dating AI founder Heath Ahrens told us what spawned the idea for the app.
I've been working in this technology — facial tech and voice recognition tech — for a long time and basically … we have a bunch of guys in the office who were all single and they wanted to see if we could apply the technology to dating. They're sitting there swiping, and their thumbs are getting tired. They said 'It'd be great if I could see the girls I'm interested in and swipe no to those who aren't my type.' Everyone has a type.
Regarding users' responses to the app, Ahrens said everything has gone well so far.
We pushed it out about two months ago without any sort of press. As of last week, we had 15,000 users and a lot of subscribers. The user response has been positive, and that goes for 15,000 people ... We're really happy with the response.
Now, you may be wondering how Dating AI got access to all of these people's profiles. Well, someone get some paper towels because I'm about to spill this tea.
Dating AI isn't actually operating with the permission of the dating platforms its displaying users from. None of the people featured on Dating AI have consented to it. In fact, they may not even know the app exists.
Dating AI scraped the API of popular dating platforms to get access to their users' profiles. Ahrens told Buzzfeed that he doesn't think this is a problem.
Unfortunately for Ahrens, Tinder and Plenty of Fish do. Tinder does not allow the automated scraping of its API and contacted Dating AI about this violation of its terms, and Plenty Of Fish is working to get Dating AI removed from the App Store. In response to this backlash, Ahrens explained to Gadget Hacks that not only is this response is to be expected, but that the responses from most dating platforms have been supportive.
Most dating sites have been very positive about the app. If it's not controversial it's not interesting. There have been conversations with dating sites that are productive that weren't initially on-board ... we think everyone will be on-board. People are going on dating sites because they want to find somebody. If we help people find matches in a better way, the incumbent players in the space get scared … Naturally, they would like for us to disappear, but the ones that aren't top dog have been really trying to get us to add them. We can't work fast enough.
We'll see if these issues with Tinder and Plenty of Fish get resolved, but for now, Dating AI is available for both Android and iOS users. Who knows, maybe you'll find the love of your life!
As for Ahrens, he confessed to Gadget Hacks who he'd be searching for.
Maybe Jessica Biel or a Scarlett Johannson.
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Screenshots by Sarah Tseggay/Gadget Hacks
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