Hinge's CEO says AI is going to make mass swiping arcane (www.businessinsider.com)

Hinge CEO Justin McLeod told Fast Company that AI will soon make "mass swiping" feel archaic by enabling far more personalized matching: instead of the current "Morse code" of likes and passes, users could describe in natural language who they are, what they value, and what turned them off in past matches, and models would infer richer preference signals to surface better prospects. Hinge already uses AI to improve matching and to prompt more expressive profile answers, and McLeod predicts this shift could arrive within three to five years (likely sooner). He was careful to rule out AI chatbots as replacements for real relationships, calling artificial intimacy an undesirable outcome. The shift matters because it addresses swiping fatigue and could materially improve match quality and conversion to real-world dates, reinforcing product-market fit — Hinge’s paying users rose 18% YoY to 1.7M, revenue per paying user grew 6% to ~$32, and Q2 revenue hit $168M (up 25% YoY). Technically, the roadmap implies heavier use of NLP and preference modeling to convert free-text signals into embeddings and policy-driven recommendations, while raising questions about transparency, bias, and privacy as platforms learn deeper, more personal profiles. McLeod’s stance contrasts with Meta’s push toward AI companions, emphasizing augmentation of human connection rather than chatbot substitutes.