An Update on our Progress Building AI Features for Grindr Users

At Grindr, we build our product based on feedback from our highly engaged community of more than 13 million users around the world. We also utilize the latest and best technologies in the market to build great product experiences. 

For a while now, we’ve known that AI has the potential to completely reimagine dating and relationships. That’s why for over a year we’ve been planning new AI features and functionality that our users will love. As we embark on this journey, we are being thoughtful and intentional around ideating, conducting user research, building, and most importantly, testing these products. Along with all of the positive potential from AI development, there are risks we must be aware of and work to mitigate. 

The goal of incorporating AI into Grindr is ultimately to help our users build deeper and more meaningful connections. To do this, we’re considering many different features, building out our team and expertise in-house, while also exploring partnerships with specialty AI providers in some cases.

We are formalizing our ethical guidelines and an oversight structure to monitor AI performance and interactions, and carefully designing our approach to testing these new features. For new AI features, we are starting with a strict, internal-only period of testing before gradually rolling out  controlled tests with small groups of opt-in users.

The best way to test something is to test its full limits internally, in a lab-like setting. That is exactly what we are doing now in a controlled environment with our first AI features. This will allow us to identify potential issues before these features ever get into users’ hands. And once the products begin user testing, our team continues to monitor and track key learnings to help us improve the product as needed.

Our ability to build and introduce new products over the past year has greatly improved as we’ve implemented new operating principles and greatly improved our team’s ability to deliver impactful products and business results. We’re proud that we’ve continued to stay on schedule with our product roadmap, and recently completed major, multi-quarter projects like an overhaul of our chat feature. Since December 1, we’ve hired 25+ new engineers, including on our AI team, and are excited about the top-tier talent we’re adding.

As our work in the AI space progresses and we continue to test and learn, we’re looking forward to starting to thoughtfully roll out these new features to our users. We believe AI will play a key role in the future of dating and relationships and will be valuable to our users as we work toward a world where the lives of the global LGBTQ+ community are free, equal, and just.