Tinder messaging its users? (Frank Brennan/Getty Images)

LOVE LOST

Tinder changed dating forever — now it’s trying everything, including AI, to hold on to its paying users

Tinder owner Match Group held an investor day this week.

12/13/24 7:34AM

When Tinder burst onto the scene in 2012, it changed — for better or worse — one of the most fundamental human experiences: how people meet their partners, date, and find that special connection. Since then, the company has become the poster child of the dating-app scene, with hundreds of millions of users swiping to their hearts’ content, turning Tinder into a billion-dollar app. But for the past few years, Tinder and its parent company, Match Group, have been working furiously just to stay relevant as the company’s user growth began to slow, go flat, and then turn negative. The last quarter brought some relief, with the company adding paying users to Tinder for the first time since 2022.

With its stock price down 76% since the end of 2021, Match Group — which also owns Hinge, Match.com, and OkCupid — has been under heavy pressure from activist investors to turn things around. Given its size and maturity, Tinder has long been the company’s cash cow, accounting for $2 billion of direct revenue over the last 12 months, nearly 4x what Hinge brought in and ~57% of the company’s total revenue.

But with a declining user base and a reputation for hook-ups rather than long-term connection, how do you turn Tinder around? Match Group execs, like plenty of business leaders before them, are looking to AI as a solution. The company is hoping that “advanced AI” will help people find matches on the platform more easily, with one slide in the company’s presentation showing an AI-powered insight for an “outdoorsy” individual looking to meet someone. It reads: “Kevin’s not into hiking like you, but loves nature and spends time on the open water kayaking” — this powerful insight is gleaned from a picture of Kevin, in which he’s kayaking on the open water.

And it’s not just in the Tinder app that Match Group is hoping to use AI. In the Hinge section of the company’s presentation, Match touts the potential of AI to help “coach struggling users,” helping one user to breezily ask another plant-loving potential match, “What is the latest count of plants in your…”

Hinge AI — Screenshot from the Match Group Investor Day presentation (December 2024)

Match Group shares are down 6% in the last week, despite the announcement of a new $1.5 billion share-buyback authorization and the initiation of a cash dividend to shareholders.

Rani Molla16h

Lyft and Uber jump after announcing expanded robotaxi partnerships with Nvidia

Uber and Lyft both announced expanded AI and autonomous vehicle partnerships with Nvidia at the company’s GTC event, sending both ride-hailing stocks up after-hours on Monday and into Tuesday’s premarket session.

Uber is currently up more than 2%, while Lyft has risen around 1.3%.

Uber said Nvidia-powered Level 4 robotaxis will launch on its platform in Los Angeles and San Francisco in 2027, with plans to scale to 28 cities globally by 2028. Meanwhile, Lyft said it will use Nvidia’s AI infrastructure to improve ride-matching, mapping, and efficiency, while also using Nvidia’s DRIVE Hyperion platform as a foundation for future autonomous fleets.

Separately, Nvidia announced expanded autonomous driving partnerships with Kia and Hyundai.

The announcements highlight Nvidia’s growing push to provide the AI hardware and software powering next-generation robotaxi networks — packaging the technology needed for self-driving cars into a platform that other companies can use to compete with Tesla.

Rani Molla19h

Tesla’s Robotaxi program has disclosed its 15th accident, Electrek reports, citing the latest filing from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. According to Electrek’s estimation, extrapolated from the last time Tesla disclosed mileage figures, that amounts to a crash every 57,000 miles — about 9x the rate for humans.

The latest crash involved a Model Y hitting a fixed object at 9 mph in January while the autonomous system was engaged.

Humans are very much still involved with Tesla’s so-called autonomous driving service. Despite the service announcing in January that it had started removing safety monitors from the front seats, only two unsupervised vehicles have been spotted in the last month, per Robotaxi Tracker. The entire fleet has also dwindled from around 50 vehicles to just 35. Their mileage is unavailable.

Rani Molla23h

Meta’s reported 20% layoff could bring headcount to its lowest level since 2021

Meta is rising Monday morning after Reuters reported the tech giant is planning to lay off 20% of its employees in an effort to use AI to make its workforce more efficient and offset its surging AI capex costs.

On the company’s last earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted 30% efficiency gains for its software engineers and said some “power users” of the company’s AI coding tools saw productivity jump as high as 80% — what some saw as a veiled threat to employees who failed to use AI to boost their output.

Meta’s headcount was nearly 79,000 last quarter, having steadily risen since its layoffs during the self-described “year of efficiency” in 2023. A 20% cut would bring headcount to around 63,000 — the company’s lowest level since 2021.

Shares were recently up 2.7%.

Exclusive: Meta planning sweeping layoffs as AI costs mount

Shares were recently up 2.7%.

Rani Molla

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What we know about Tesla’s Terafab project, which Musk says is launching in a few days

Elon Musk says the goal is to produce 100 billion to 200 billion AI chips a year.

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Report: Amid safety failures, ChatGPT’s planned “adult mode” caused concern within OpenAI, with minors misclassified as adults 12% of the time

Despite a series of alarming mental health safety failures that resulted in ChatGPT users allegedly using the product to plan suicides and murder, OpenAI decided to double down on its plan to roll out an “adult mode,” allowing the AI chatbot to produce erotic content.

That decision raised alarms within the company, warning that users could develop unhealthy emotional dependence on the chatbot and that the new age estimation feature was imperfect — and therefore likely to allow minors to access the feature — according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. Per the report, some 12% of the time, the age estimation feature mistakenly classified minors as adults.

OpenAI’s council of mental health experts were “furious” and unanimous in their opposition to the plans to move forward with the adult mode feature after they were told about the decision in January, with concerns about creating a “sexy suicide coach.”

Earlier this month, the company said it would delay the new feature to focus on other products.

OpenAI’s Bid to Allow X-Rated Talk Is Freaking Out Its Own Advisers