Are dating apps bad for your mental health?
Research shows dating apps like Hinge, Bumble or Tinder can be associated with negative impacts on mental health.
LEARN MOREPosted: 2:29 p.m. EDT Jul 21, 2023
Dating app 'Vinylly' has become one of the first to use artificial intelligence to help people find a match based on their taste in music.
As a lifelong music fan, CEO and founder Rachel Van Nortwick founded Vinylly back in 2016.
"Some of the greatest relationships, friendships, romantic relationships I've had in my life have definitely had music as a component," Van Nortwick said.
The app takes users' tastes in music to match them with compatible love interests. Seven years later, it's on both the App Store and Google Play with a new A.I. feature.
"A.I. is the hottest, you know, buzzword around tech today," Van Nortwick said. "For us, we really wanted to think about using A.I. purposefully in the app."
She and her team found A.I.'s purpose for the app in Vinylly's new cocktail lounge feature.
"We kind of made the comparison of our dating app being, like, you know, a bar," Van Nortwick said. "The cocktail lounge allows our users to pair two different genres, so they can pick any two from their profile or match's profile and it generates a [cocktail] recipe with instructions."
However, with the rise in A.I. comes the rise in skepticism among some users.
Arizona State University School of Computing and A.I. Professor Subbarao Kambhampati told Scripps News Phoenix that at some point, A.I. could probably know more about us than we even do ourselves.
"All of this is actually information that is being captured and it depends on the goodwill of the operations to not misuse it at this point of time," Kambhampati said.
Van Nortwick said, though, her company uses the information gathered in the best interests of the app's users.
"There are, as with anything, responsible ways to go about things and maybe irresponsible or unethical ways to go about things," she said. "I think in terms of Vinylly and how I'm looking at it, it's an enhancement."
This story was originally published by Amelia Fabiano at Scripps News Phoenix.
