Would you farm out your online dating efforts to a little pixelated sprite, a “pixel twin” trained on your personality, that interacts with other “twins” on your behalf? That prospect has been raised with the launch of a new AI project.
Elsewhere in the dating app world this past month, there’s been a lot of movement in gay hook-up world. Popular LGBT hook-up web service Squirt has finally made it to iOs and Sniffies, another popular hook-up app, has had a big cash boost. In a declining wider dating app sector, could hook-up apps be the future for growth?
Beyond all that, Tinder is turning to iris scans for “proof of humanity”, humans are sitting in on online dates in China, and Japanese authorities are subsidizing dating app costs to encourage more births.
All this and more in our latest dating app news roundup.
Getting a ‘helping hand’ from AI in online dating spaces, either with integrated functions or by simply copying and pasting zinger messages from ChatGPT, is hardly new. Now a development project is helping us envisage a future where AI ‘digital twins’ take over early dating duties almost completely.
Pixel Societies is a new project involving the creation of AI agents, in the form of pixelated sprite characters trained to mimic someone’s personality and communication style. They can then go about interacting and flirting on that person’s behalf, in a digital environment.
Currently this digital environment is an online representation of an office that the Pixel Societies team created, but the plan is for the project to launch its own full social space, if it continues to develop.
It’s all billed as a “simulated second life”, with a “pixel twin” that “enters the universe before you do and starts finding the people you should meet” (the universe, for now, being a pixelated office the team built). AI agents such as these can be trained on social media profiles as well as user-provided inputs.
It may be a while before autonomous AI agents like these are fully unleashed across dating spaces, but their emergence has raised concerns that this is yet another case of AI steamrolling over real human interaction. However, Joon Lee, one of Pixel Societies’ developers, told Newsweek that the project represented the opposite.
“Pixel Societies is meant to be a nudge,” said Lee. “Give people a taste, get them excited about seeing real friends in real life again.”
Lee added that with Pixel Societies, the team wanted to aid deeper interactions and connections, whereas social media has, he claimed, a history of forging shallow connections. “We want to build something different: an experience that enables new, serendipitous strong ties,” Lee said.
So, nothing to worry about, then.
Squirt has launched its first dedicated mobile dating app, after around 25 years running a popular gay hook-up site.
The app is called SQ Dating – Gay Chat & Meet, and has been launched on iOS following its Android debut, finally bringing the Squirt cruising vibe in app form. We’ve called it a dating app, but really, in true Squirt fashion it’s a pure hook-up app, and this is something the team behind it is unapologetic about.
The app makes use of location functions to aid matches for gay hook-ups. Andrew Nolan, head of dating businesses at Squirt owner Pink Triangle Press, said: “Squirt is built for real-world connection – direct, global, and unapologetically cruising-first.”
Staying in gay cruising, dating app titan Match Group has invested $100 million in Sniffies, another map-based gay hook-up app designed to make getting laid incredibly easy. It has an estimated three million monthly active users globally.
Dating apps in general may be on a slow decline, as many original Millennial users leave dating scenes, but LGBT hook-up apps are clearly seen as having strong futures. Over 20 million messages are reportedly sent on Sniffies daily (we’re guessing that a lot of them are, “You up?”).
Spencer Rascoff, Match Group’s CEO, said: “There’s also clear and growing demand in this space, and Sniffies feels genuinely different and authentic to its audience. We’re excited to support the founders as they continue to build on their vision.” Match Group buying a stake in a hookup app it doesn’t already own is less a bet on serendipity than a hedge against its core apps shedding users.
We’ve tracked Match Group’s wider slump and the wave of biometric and AI features pitched as fixes in our March roundup on dating apps as ‘subscription traps’.
Various dating apps have been pushing face scan verification recently as they attempt to crack down on fake and scam accounts. Now Tinder is set to push into a new era of “proof of humanity” with retinal scans.
The OG dating app is teaming up with retinal scan verification company World, the Sam Altman-backed iris-scanning venture formerly known as Worldcoin, which claims to prove users are human without requiring their personal information. Users will be able to submit retinal scans to World via their phone, then get a “proof of humanity” badge to attach to their profile.
World is also working with video software Zoom, where the prospect of fake, AI-generated users has become more of a concern recently.
World says its iris scan processes are anonymous and not tied to personal data, a claim that regulators in several countries have not simply taken at face value. The iris is more unique to an individual than a fingerprint, which is precisely why handing yours to a dating-app verification scheme is worth more than a shrug.
Tinder recently responded to a video by journalist Christophe Haubursin, who highlighted a potential flaw in the dating app’s face scan verification processes (watch below). Haubursin showed how some Tinder accounts seemed to be verified through one photo on the profile, but contained other photos that were suspicious.
Tinder told Mashable that it had since “taken action to strengthen our Photo Verification badging logic, including requiring greater consistency across profile photos and additional reviews to achieve higher confidence in cases that warrant extra scrutiny.”
All eyes on whether retinal scans help clear up potential loop-holes like these in the future, but it sits squarely within the wider push toward biometric verification we’ve been skeptical of across for a while now.
AI is very much not the focus of a Chinese dating app that’s been going gangbusters recently, instead focusing on human matchmakers muscling in on dates.
Yidui was founded by the Milian Technology company back in 2015, but recently the company reapplied for an IPO in Hong Kong, having seen its revenue rise by 74 percent in 2025, to 4.12 billion yuan ($570 million).
The app has found success by having human dating facilitators sit in on online dates between users who match within the app, encouraging them to interact. This might sound awkward to many in the West, but in China organized matchmaking events such as ‘marriage markets’ and expo meetings are common, and this method of online dating generally isn’t seen as odd.
Yidui has reportedly recruited over 193,000 human ‘hosts’ to pop up in these date-facilitating sessions, to chivvy along users and prod them to get to know each other.
The financial news outlet Benzinga said: “Chinese youth are famous for lacking dating skills because their parents often discourage romantic pursuits until they finish their education. Having a third-party advisor provides a necessary social bridge.”
Japanese authorities have long been concerned about the country’s aging population, with the latest attempt to encourage marriages and births comes in the form of subsidizing dating app costs.
In Kochi Prefecture a new subsidy program offers people up to 20,000 yen ($125) a year to spend on government-approved matchmaking and dating apps. Japan has tried throwing money at this before, including a $1.9M AI matchmaking push. The campaign is aimed at 20-39 year-olds who can use the subsidy towards costs on apps such as Tapple, Japan’s biggest dating app.
One in four young marriages in Japan reportedly start on apps, so the spend at least targets a real channel, even if a 20,000 yen voucher is unlikely to shift a birth rate driven by wages, hours, and gender norms. Crucially, you can only use the subsidy money on certified dating apps rather than, say, some random threesome-focused hook-up app.
