Meta’s Facebook Dating gets smarter with AI matchmaking and surprise weekly 'Meet Cutes' (www.techradar.com)

Meta has rolled out two new features for Facebook Dating: an AI-powered Dating Assistant that parses natural-language prompts to refine searches and coach profiles, and Meet Cute, a weekly surprise-match feature that presents one algorithmically chosen person for you to chat with or pass. The assistant lets users type detailed preferences (for example, “someone who lives near me and likes water activities” or “a girl in Brooklyn who likes baseball and isn’t allergic to pets”), then returns tailored suggestions, rewrites bios, and proposes first-message or date ideas. Meet Cute reintroduces serendipity by taking decision-making off the user’s thumb-swipe once a week. For the AI/ML community this matters because it showcases practical uses of NLU and personalization layered on top of traditional structured filters, plus productized LLM-like coaching for microcopy generation and intent parsing. The features signal Meta’s push to boost engagement amid swipe fatigue and to compete with Tinder/Hinge, leveraging algorithmic matchmaking and generative assistance. Key implications include evaluation challenges (how to measure match quality versus engagement), privacy and safety trade-offs when AI processes sensitive preferences, and risks of bias or over-optimization. Success will hinge on the models’ relevance, moderation, transparency, and whether users trust AI to curate both serendipity and compatibility.