The Bumble Founder’s Bleak Comments On What Dating Will Look Like In The Future Is Reminding Everyone Of ‘Black Mirror’

The future was supposed to be cool. We were going to have flying cars, sassy robot maids, and hit songs with the words “Eep Opp” in the title. But unfortunately, things did not turn out like The Jetsons.

Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd recently defended the dating app’s AI feature by offering a grim prediction of how hot singles in your area will soon find matches. “You could, in the near future, be talking to your AI dating concierge. You could share your insecurities,” she said at the Bloomberg Technology Summit, according to Gizmodo. “There is a world where your dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierges.”

Herd’s comments apparently (and rightly!) caused those in attendance to laugh, but she was serious.

“No no truly,” Wolfe Herd continue. “And then you don’t have to talk 600 people. It could scan all of San Francisco for you and say these are the three people you really ought to meet. So that’s the power of AI if harnessed the right way.” Though this robotic future of dating sounds far out, Bumble is already testing out an AI feature. Wolfe Herd said “Opening Move,” a new feature Bumble unveiled in April and coming later this year, takes the pressure off of women by allowing them to select an AI-generated message instead of creating one on their own.

If this sounds like something from an episode of Black Mirror, well, that’s because there’s an episode of Black Mirror with almost this exact plot. Season four’s “Hang the DJ” is about a dating app that tells couples how long their relationships will last as soon as they begin. It doesn’t matter if they feel a connection: if the app says it’s time to move on, it’s time to move on. (There’s also a twist I won’t spoil.) “Hang the DJ” is one of the best entries in the show’s Netflix era (and a great The Smiths songs), and a lot of people are making the connection between the episode and Herd’s remarks.

(Via Gizmodo)