Dating app rejects AI trend as singles say it makes dating 'less authentic'

Major dating apps are leaning heavily into AI — just like all of the tech industry — but one app is promoting "human intelligence" instead.

Hily is "relaunching" HI, or human intelligence, in its app — a tongue-in-cheek response to apps like Tinder and Bumble reinventing their offerings with AI features. Recently, Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd announced that Bumble is killing the swipe and making way for something different. While Wolfe Herd was vague about the details, Bumble is set to launch a new AI-powered experience, and the backlash was swift from daters. As Mashable reported in May, some believe Bumble has "lost the plot."

Hily's "HI" appears to be inspired by the online outrage about this, and it's also taken from Hily's own findings. In its Aug. 2025 T.R.U.T.H. Report, 69 percent of Gen Z and 74 percent of millennial American daters (based on a survey of 1,559 U.S. daters) think that AI involvement in online dating makes it less authentic.

Over half of young American daters, regardless of gender (54 percent women and 63 percent men) stated they'd be less attracted to a dating app match who they suspect used AI to create their profile, too. Despite this, though, Hily found that the top reason women and Gen Z daters use AI in online dating is to create a bio (51 percent and 50 percent, respectively). Fifty-two percent of men and 47 percent of millennials, meanwhile, have used it to provide suggestions for conversations.

So while they seem anti-AI, some daters are still using it when online dating. Still, Hily is sticking to "HI," for now.

"We'll use technology where it helps, but we're not rushing to replace the human part of human connection just because AI is trending," Hily's chief product officer, Liubomyr Pivtorak, stated in a press release.

Hily's dating coach, Julie Nguyen, stated, "If we begin to outsource connection to AI and optimize for love, we start to lose the intuitive ability to choose for ourselves — and lose what that process teaches us about connection, which is beautifully human."