Facebook Dating integrates AI as "wingman" to make matchmaking less exhausting
Meta is adding AI to Facebook Dating to fight swipe fatigue, but it faces stiff competition from Tinder and Hinge.
“Technology is best when it brings people together.” Those words came from Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, and they land differently now that dating apps are handing the matchmaking work over to AI.
Meta has just added an AI assistant to Facebook Dating, a feature that can both fine-tune your profile and fetch matches based on oddly specific requests.
Instead of endless swiping, you could ask it to find a “Brooklyn girl in tech” or let it suggest tweaks that make your profile stand out.
Alongside that, Meta is also testing something called Meet Cute, a weekly surprise match based on its algorithm. The idea is to cut through what many users call swipe fatigue by replacing choice overload with curated introductions. It is a small but notable attempt to make dating apps feel less like a chore and more like a discovery.
That matters because Facebook Dating is still climbing an uphill battle. Its growth among young adults has been steady, with matches up 10% year over year and hundreds of thousands of new profiles created each month in the US and Canada, according to Meta. Yet those numbers pale next to Tinder’s 50 million daily active users or Hinge’s 10 million. In a space dominated by loud players, Meta is trying to position its service as the softer conversation happening in the corner.
Meanwhile, the wider dating industry has already made AI the default. Match Group, which owns Tinder and Hinge, has invested heavily in AI, rolling out tools like AI photo selectors and text refiners. Bumble and Hinge are both developing their own AI-powered matchmaking systems. Even smaller entrants like Sitch are using AI as a differentiator. In that sense, Meta is not leading but catching up.
Loy Okezie
What makes this interesting is not whether Facebook Dating suddenly becomes popular, but whether AI actually changes the rhythm of modern dating. Meta is betting that curated surprises and profile coaching can make the experience feel less exhausting. And beyond dating, it fits into Zuckerberg’s broader push to make Facebook feel culturally relevant again.
Whether that works is another story. Technology can tee up the meeting, but chemistry is still a leap of faith. If AI does succeed in reducing fatigue, though, it may reshape how people think about digital dating altogether. The machine might not replace romance, but it could change how often people are willing to keep looking for it.
