Tinder Wants AI To Scan Your Entire Camera Roll

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Tinder is now getting into the AI game and they announced this at this big event that I was actually sad I missed last week in LA where they have this new feature that is rolling out in the US in the next coming months that that will allow it's going to you're going to be prompted as a user to allow Tinder to access your camera rolls and give give them access to photos where basically it can use AI to I guess match you with better matches.

[00:00:34]Let's go through the 404 media for story first and then we'll kind of talk about what this means. So Tinder plans to let machine vision algorithms loose on your camera roll. Instead of building a profile on their own, AI will scan users locally stored photos, everything from gym selfies to pictures of their family, sensitive documents and dick pics to help construct profiles by determining what users interests and values are.

[00:01:00]Dating apps are the go-to way for people to connect romantically in the modern dating world. As AI has ridden it risen in popularity thanks to services like chat GPT. However, users are suffering the consequences of problems like bots and AI generated messages infiltrating dating apps. For some people the experience is less authentic than ever as people offload get to know you conversations to artificial intelligence. The feature is still being tested with early access available in Australia beginning this month. Although Tinder says it attempts to filter out explicit images, users may still be concerned with Tinder's AI scanning their entire camera roll. Quote, it's up to you to figure out what you're comfortable sharing back with Tinder, Tinder's head of product said. Still, users can't pick individual photos they want analyzed or ignored. Tinder's safeguards are meant to filter out explicit images or text and to blur faces before insights are processed.

[00:01:53]That is trusting the company with way too much by the way in my opinion.

[00:01:56]Tinder claims its AI is looking for themes and interests like pets, activities or food as well as photos that are well-lit or well-framed. In theory, this will help users decide the best way to present themselves online.

[00:02:10]There is some art to it, Canter said.

[00:02:11]It's not just science. It's unclear what happens if your camera roll is full of bad photos. Eventually, Canter said, Tinder will add the ability to turn photos into larger collages for their profiles. We do give people a pretty big variety of photos so we're not going to go from 3,000 to 3. Canter says it looks for this for subject matter and tries to group insights based on similar interests. If I have one dog photo of 20,000, I'm not really a dog person, Canter said as an example. Tinder has already heavily leaned into AI. Canter told 404 media that artificial intelligence is writing more than half the apps code these days, which is honestly good like I'm all for automating coding. That's fine. Automate that. Automate the app development.

[00:02:55]That's fine.

[00:02:57]Harvesting data from photos I'm not as hot on.

[00:03:01]Several of its new AI driven features include photo enhancements, match recommendations and photo scanning.

[00:03:07]Canter said that the app's use of AI is to quote help you express yourself but not to do so on the daters behalf. If the canda camera roll is the window into the modern soul, it's also a goldmine of personal information. Depending on what someone photographs, their camera roll could include everything from photos of sensitive documents like banking or medical info to nudes. It's potential security nightmare especially when people are sharing intimate details about themselves or their dating lives.

[00:03:33]Security failures on dating apps like T put users in danger. Multiple breaches exposed personal information including photos, driver's license information and direct messages before it was finally yanked from the app store. Tinder has its own privacy and security issues.

[00:03:47]Last year we revealed that the dating app was one of thousands co-opted to mine location data. Great. In January, hackers claimed to have stolen internal data from Match Group which owns Tinder.

[00:03:59]According to Canter, Tinder isn't storing the data it pulls from the photos on its end. Quote, it's purely on your device, he said. Tinder won't scan your deleted photos or anything from your photos hidden folder. After it's finished scouring your images, the AI selects specific photos for users to choose to upload to their public profile. If the AI's categorization of a user is say a dog person is inaccurate, users can note that feedback and choose to either accept or reject the AI's insights. Anything that doesn't go on someone's profile is deleted. If users want new insights later, they'll have to do the process all over again.

[00:04:32]In talking to this new generation of daters, they want something different, Canter told 404 media. I think you see connection that that hasn't changed.

[00:04:41]I don't think they're frustrated with dating. They're frustrated with all the friction that dead ends with dating.

[00:04:48]Okay. So I think there's a few things about this that I well, there's a lot of things about this that I don't like but I think there's a few things that um are kind of strange to me and one of those is the idea that users automatically photograph things they like. And I was thinking about this on my own um on my own camera roll because I actually love my nephews but I have almost no photos of them and I just I don't like maybe it's me cuz I work in journalism too. I take so many screenshots like most of my camera roll is screenshots and some of the best times of my life like I'm honestly not photographing them very heavily I think because I'm more in the moment and the stuff that I take photographs of is maybe just more like day-to-day stuff. I just I wonder how I wonder like what people photograph and what that says about them versus kind of like what their life is really like and what their values are really are and how much is what's on your camera roll a proxy for what's important to you. It's certainly like a signal but sorry, I'm like sitting on my leg. Um but is it like the best one? I just I don't know. I would never do this. I think it's crazy to do this. Um I think that it's probably not going to get you better matches but I don't know.

[00:06:14]I I did see and I don't know if this was a project or something it was a while ago. I feel like there was some like stunt type app that would match you based on camera like your photos or maybe it was like Facebook. I can't remember what it was like years ago. So I like the idea of like harvesting users data to like find better matches. Like that was the whole thinking behind platforms like OKCupid back in the day but this just seems ill ill-advised and I don't like how they're like framing it all around AI. Like we want to fix dating apps with AI. Well, AI sucks.

[00:06:50]So I don't like that.

[00:06:52]Um and as this person tweeted, privacy is officially cooked. Tinder basically now wants to scan your entire camera roll to learn your vibe. That's your metadata, locations, timestamps and faces all sitting on the dating app servers.

[00:07:05]There's a single breach, your entire private gallery is in the wild. I don't know if that's true cuz I think it's actually stored locally on your device but still hackers can intercept that. Like it is there are still data privacy concerns with this system.

[00:07:18]We legit went from don't share your password to voluntarily handing hookup apps a full internal report on our lives. Yeah, I mean I just think that this is not something that you need to do.

[00:07:29]And I also think that there's something to choosing your own photos. Like I don't like this idea of like AI selecting like the optimized like what are the most optimized ones? What are the best ones? Like I don't know. Like I feel like actually your choices and decisions to include certain photos in your profile also says something about you and if we're just going to let AI you know, harvest all of our photos and choose the most optimized ones, I actually think we learn a little bit less about each other because we learn we don't learn as much about what somebody would have chosen. Do you know what I'm saying? Like what what somebody would have like that that decision to select the certain photos does also reveal something about someone. Um and you're kind of taking that away. So um Sorry, I keep like this chair is just really uncomfortable so I keep moving around. Um Tinder Tinder is also incentivized for matching you with a compatible long-term partner cuz you'll uninstall and stop the membership. Yeah, this is the issue with dating apps as a whole is that their whole business model is predicated on keeping you swiping. I think what's so you know, I was talking to somebody the other day like dating apps have never really been covered as tech companies um and it's kind of crazy because for all the moral panic about the impact that social media is having on society and stuff I would argue dating apps are having even more of an impact because they're directly affecting your like social network and your like love life and like these intimate parts of your life. Like and I think a lot of the stuff you know, I don't want to like incite a moral panic about dating apps now but I do think that like it's crazy that they don't get more scrutiny, you know? Like there's so much scrutiny about like social media content recommendation algorithms but where is that outrage and moral panic about literal suggestion algorithms for like who people are matched with for dating?

[00:09:30]Like that's a far more consequential algorithm and yet these moral panic people, you know that it's ultimately about censorship and content because they're not having they're not having a moral panic about you know, Tinder's algorithm, right?

[00:09:43]Um So yeah, somebody said if you automate your your self-presentation, what even is the point of trying to date?

[00:09:52]Yeah, I just think it it makes me sad that like people are just kind of like I don't want to say low effort cuz I know how exhausting it probably is to like set up all of this stuff. Like set up your profile, curate your profile, put yourself out there.

[00:10:10]Like I know how miserable that is, but like at the same time like letting AI do all of it also feels bad.

[00:10:17]Um Somebody said, "Oh, send the Linktree for your home office supplies chair for us to donate." Okay, I literally might make one.

[00:10:26]Cuz I need a better chair. This is a $60 like crappy chair that I got when COVID started and I need to upgrade it, but I have such decision fatigue.

[00:10:35]I want one of those like nice chairs, but I think I have to get it off Craigslist. Like I have to get a used one cuz otherwise they're like $800 or something. I'm like I can't spend $800 on a chair that's like half my rent.

[00:10:46]Um but anyway, yeah, I I just I think that um I I think that this I I just think that this is like bleak and depressing and it makes me sad how much these dating apps are leaning into AI and I do wonder if we're going to start to see maybe a little bit more of a backlash where it's like uh people trying to kind of like meet IRL or get connected IRL or not you know, just basically opt out of AI because another thing that I've heard from people and I did a story about this. Um when did I do I think I wrote about it like two years ago.

[00:11:24]Let's pull up my story actually. Um AI dating But I talked about this like AI messaging tool.

[00:11:37]Oh, here. Wow, I was really ahead of the time as usual. Haha. But like kind of crazy. Um So I wrote about this AI basically about like how dating was becoming automated. Um This is back in 2023. Wow.

[00:12:01]So Wait, three years ago. Oh my god, it's 2026. April. Oh my god, literally almost to the day three years ago. That's wild.

[00:12:10]Um but I wrote about how dating apps are increasingly automated and I interviewed people that use um automated tools including this one Riz um or this guy Dimitri that that's a data scientist that developed a tool that would message people. Now, I think he was on the spectrum and that kind of helped him communicate which I'm I appreciate the sort of assistive nature of some of these technologies, but I don't like that people are relying on them so much. Um and I basically wrote about how like people were automating every aspect of their profile. So I wrote you know, I talk about like how people are using AI to automate like what photos they choose. People are using AI to automate the messaging on dating apps and just overall dating was becoming more automated and that's crazy. I wrote this three years ago cuz this was only a year after ChatGPT came out. Um but I think now we are literally seeing this happen in real time, right? And so you know, that's depressing cuz I actually when I wrote this story, when I wrote my WaPo story, I did reach out to all of the major dating companies and at the time they were very much like, "Oh, we wouldn't do that. We don't want to do that. Uh you know, we weren't we like we we you know, we're for humans. Like we we try to crack down on bots and stuff."

[00:13:37]And now they're like, "Wait a minute, we love AI.

[00:13:40]Let Let's let have AI harvest all the data."

[00:13:44]So it just kind of I just think it's kind of interesting. I I'm just against the automation of it all and I I hope that some apps can come to fruition that are also against automation that really prioritize human connection cuz I think also like the thing that makes people feel so fatigued is like it sucks when everyone else is automating their experience on these apps, right? And then you as a user are maybe using it in a human way. So for example, uh I wrote this years ago. I think this was like the mid-2010s I wrote about these like automated swiping um machines and bots that mostly men were making where effectively they would just be right swiping on every woman. And this is something you can do manually, too, but they were like making machines that would do it or making bots that would do it. And um and I interviewed women that, you know, matched with some of these men. I I also interviewed the most right swiped man on Tinder which is this guy that like hacked Tinder to become the most right swiped man. It's a whole thing. Um but Oh my god, sorry. There's something on my back. Ow. Uh but anyway, women that I spoke to were like "We hate this. Like we hate this because like I'm actually taking time to evaluate these men, evaluate whether they're a match, see if we could see a future together. Like I'm taking time to look at their profile and they have a bot that's just auto right swiping, you know, on every single woman in their area between the age of like 21 and 30 or whatever. So I think yeah, like now we're in this realm where maybe more women are using bots, too, but I just think we need less bots and less AI in all dating capacities in dating apps.

[00:15:28]Um Oh, somebody said I thought I thought YouTube algorithm matching for dating could be kind of dope. That would be cool. I mean one thing that I think would be interesting again would be to use the data that you're already like and of course the social platforms will never allow this. Um because it would require, you know, they they all want to sort of restrict their APIs and not allow third-party apps in any capacity. Um but I agree. I think that would be interesting. And it's something you guys might not know is how YouTube started which is actually hilarious because YouTube started as a dating app.

[00:16:04]And I wrote about this in my book, but YouTube started back in 2005 as a dating app and it was meant um it wasn't a dating app where like you would compare kind of what content you were consuming cuz there wasn't content on YouTube. It started as an app where they thought people would upload videos of themselves to date. And then people just started uploading videos of random sh- as like a video repository and they were like, "Wait, that's like a way better business model. We'll just do that."

[00:16:31]But I think it's very funny that it was originally supposed to be a dating app.

[00:16:36]Yeah, that's how it launched. It launched as a dating app originally.

[00:16:40]And especially back in 2005 when it was like not easy to get videos of yourself online and also like online dating was really not normalized. Like nobody wanted to use it. I when I was writing my book, I interviewed product managers who were product managers at YouTube around this time in the 20 in the in the 2000s and they were like "Yeah, that was always pretty doomed. It was honestly it was kind of like way ahead of its time."

[00:17:05]Um I know people who have read the book are like, "We know this already." But if you haven't read my book, I I I write a lot about sort of the origins of of YouTube.

[00:17:17]And I think it's interesting. There's actually a lot of um you know, I just think like a lot of times these platforms are started for one reason and then they sort of evolve into another.

[00:17:26]And and I love that. I think it's it's pretty cool. Um okay, no spoilers.

[00:17:31]Somebody said they're 100 pages in.

[00:17:33]Thank you so much for reading it.

[00:17:35]Um the very first video about elephants in the zoo. I think that was when they were out of it Yeah, it's called Me at the zoo and I can't remember if that was before or after they were out of beta.

[00:17:46]Um but yes, that is the that is the sort of like iconic first video by a user of course. Like the founders and other people had been posting in but I don't know if that was the first video that was posted. I think once it was out of the public beta.

[00:18:00]It's called Me at the zoo. It's very famous.

[00:18:03]Um and yeah, I think it's like elephants and maybe a giraffe.

[00:18:07]Um Yeah, there's a great website. I wrote about this a while ago. There's this like great website that has a lot of like the it basically like documents all of early YouTube. So it's like everything from like 2005 or 6 to like 2010. And it's really it's really good.

[00:18:26]Um Somebody said that they heard YouTube came about because people were trying to search the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident. Um that was related to why it was popular.

[00:18:37]Um but that's not how it that's not like how it that's not how it was invented.

[00:18:46]But I think that people were I can't remember what the relation was.

[00:18:51]Mark Bergen wrote about that in his book.

[00:18:54]Um but yeah, they didn't I mean at the time The early time you have to remember, too, like it was very not okay for people to have actual video of live broadcast on the on YouTube. And certainly not in 2004 or 5 or whenever that Janet Jackson thing was which must have been right around when YouTube was in beta. Um because the really the really big breakthrough video that like put YouTube on the map was actually Lazy Sunday um which was this like Andy Samberg SNL skit thing and that went mega viral and that made all of the uh sort of legacy media companies be like, "Wait, what is this thing? What's YouTube?

[00:19:39]Wait, should we like put our stuff on there? Like what's going on?" So I don't know. YouTube has a pretty interesting history. I write about some of it in my book. Mark Bergen, uh who's a reporter at Bloomberg, has an entire book that's in ex- really, really like deep detail. It's a It's a history of YouTube um and it's a great book. It's very in-depth and uh yeah, if you want to dig into it, it's it's pretty interesting.

[00:20:03]Um So, yeah. Anyway, back back to the age of of automated dating. I hate it. I think it's not great. I personally would not use this feature and I would be pretty skeptical of anyone that did. I wonder if you're able to tell if you're a Tinder user who has used this feature cuz I also think that could be an interesting filter. I imagine there are some people out there that really don't want to be matching with somebody that is using these automated AI tools. So, I I wonder if there's a way to like filter out people that are using the automated AI tools cuz I feel like that's something that people might want, honestly.