Grindr’s AI wingman, currently in beta testing with around 10,000 users, arrives at a pivotal moment for the software company. With its iconic notification chirp and ominous mask logo, the app is known culturally as a digital bathhouse for gay and bisexual men to swap nudes and meet with nearby users for sex, but Grindr CEO George Arison sees the addition of a generative AI assistant and machine intelligence tools as an opportunity for expansion.
“This is not just a hookup product anymore,” he says. “There’s obviously no question that it started out as a hookup product, but the fact that it’s become a lot more over time is something people don’t fully appreciate.” Grindr’s product road map for 2025 spotlights multiple AI features aimed at current power users, like chat summaries, as well as dating and travel-focused tools.
Whether users want them or not, it’s all part of a continuing barrage of AI features being added by developers to most dating apps, from Hinge deciding whether profile answers are a slog using AI, to Tinder soon rolling out AI-powered matches. Wanting to better understand how AI fits into Grindr’s future, I experimented with a beta version of Grindr’s AI wingman for this hands-on report.
First Impressions of Grindr’s AI Wingman
In interviews over the past few months, Arison has laid out a consistent vision for Grindr’s AI wingman as the ultimate dating tool—a digital helper that can write witty responses for users as they chat with matches, help pick guys worth messaging, and even plan the perfect night out.
“It’s been surprisingly flirtatious,” he says about the chatbot. “Which is good.”
Once enabled, the AI wingman appeared as another faceless Grindr profile in my message inbox. Despite grand visions for the tool, the current iteration I tested was a simple, text-only chatbot tuned for queer audiences.
First, I wanted to test the chatbot’s limits. Unlike the more prudish outputs from OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, Grindr’s AI wingman was willing to be direct. I asked it to share fisting tips for beginners, and after stating that fisting is not for newcomers, the AI wingman encouraged me to start slow, use tons of lube, explore smaller toys first, and always have a safe word ready to go. “Most importantly, do your research and maybe chat with experienced folks in the community,” the bot said. ChatGPT flagged similar questions as going against its guidelines, and Claude refused to even broach the subject.
Although the wingman was down to talk through other kinks—like watersports and pup play—with a focus on education, the app rebuked my advances for any kind of erotic role-play. “How about we keep things playful but PG-13?” said Grindr’s AI wingman. “I’d be happy to chat about dating tips, flirting strategies, or fun ways to spice up your profile instead.” The bot also refused to explore kinks based on race or religion, warning me that these are likely harmful forms of fetishization.
Processing data through Amazon Web Service’s Bedrock system, the chatbot does include some details scraped from the web, but it can’t go out and find new information in real time. Since the current version doesn’t actively search the internet for answers, the wingman provided more general advice than specifics when asked to plan a date for me in San Francisco. “How about checking out a local queer-owned restaurant or bar?” it said. “Or maybe plan a picnic in a park and people-watch together?” Pressed for specifics, the AI wingman did name a few relevant locations for date nights in the city but couldn’t provide operating hours. In this instance, posing a similar question to ChatGPT produced a better date night itinerary, thanks to that chatbot’s ability to search the open web.
Despite my lingering skepticism about the wingman tool potentially being more of an AI fad than the actual future of dating, I do see immediate value in a chatbot that can help users come to terms with their sexuality and start the coming out process. Many Grindr users, including myself, become users of the app before telling anyone about their desires, and a kind, encouraging chatbot would have been more helpful to me than the “Am I Gay?” quiz I resorted to as a teenager.
Reece Rogers
Out With the Bugs, In With the AI
When he took the top job at Grindr before the company’s public listing in 2022, Arison prioritized zapping bugs and fixing app glitches over new feature releases. “We got a lot of bugs out of the way last year,” he says. “Until now, we didn’t really have an opportunity to be able to build a lot of new features.”
Despite getting investors hot and bothered, it’s hard to tell how daily Grindr users will respond to this new injection of AI into the app. While some may embrace the suggested matches and the more personalized experience, generative AI is now more culturally polarizing than ever as people complain about its oversaturation, lack of usefulness, and invasion of privacy. Grindr users will be presented with the option to allow their sensitive data, such as the contents of their conversations and precise location, to be used to train the company’s AI tools. Users can go into their account’s privacy settings to opt out if they change their mind.
Arison is convinced in-app conversations reveal a more authentic version of users than what’s filled out on any profile, and the next generation of recommendations will be stronger by focusing on that data. “It’s one thing what you say in your profile,” he says. “But, it’s another thing what you say in your messages—how real that might be.” Though on apps like Grindr, where the conversations often contain explicit, intimate details, some users will be uncomfortable with an AI model reading their private chats to learn more about them, choosing to avoid those features.
Potentially, one of the most helpful AI tools for overly active Grindr users who are open to their data being processed by AI models could be the chat summaries recapping recent interactions with some talking points thrown in to keep conversations going.
“It’s really about reminding you what type of connection you might have had with this user, and what might be good topics that could be worth picking back up on,” says A. J. Balance, Grindr’s chief product officer.
Then there’s the model’s ability to highlight the profiles of users it thinks you’re most compatible with. Say you’ve matched with another user and chatted a bit, but that’s as far as things went in the app. Grindr’s AI model will be able to summarize details about that conversation and, using what it has learned about you both, highlight those profiles as part of an “A-List” and offer some ways to rekindle the connection, widening the door you’ve already opened.
“This ‘A-List’ product actually goes through your inbox with folks you’ve spoken with, pulls out the folks where you’ve had some good connections,” Balance says. “And it uses that summary to remind you why it could be good to pick back up the conversation.”
Slow Roll
As a gaybie, my first interactions on Grindr were liberating and constricting at the same time. It was the first time I saw casual racism, like “No fats. No fems. No Asians,” blasted across multiple online profiles. And even at my fittest, there always seemed to be some headless torso more in shape than me right around the corner and ready to mock my belly. Based on past experiences, AI features that could detect addiction to the app and encourage healthier habits and boundaries would be a welcome addition.
While Grindr’s other, AI-focused tools are planned for more immediate releases throughout this year, the app’s generative AI assistant isn’t projected to have a complete rollout until 2027. Arison doesn’t want to rush a full release to Grindr’s millions of global users. “These are also expensive products to run,” he says. “So, we want to be kind of careful with that as well.” Innovations in generative AI, like DeepSeek’s R1 model, may eventually reduce the cost to run it on the backend.
Will he be able to navigate adding these experimental, and sometimes controversial, AI tools to the app as part of a push to become more welcoming for users looking to find long-term relationships or queer travel advice, in addition to hookups? For now, Arison appears optimistic, albeit cautious. “We don’t expect all of these things to take off,” he says. “Some of them will and some won’t.”