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.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla24h

Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

6/15/26

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan6/15/26

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Rani Molla6/15/26

Tesla used skewed data in push for European FSD approval, Reuters finds

Tesla has used highly questionable safety stats in an effort to win over European regulators and rekindle sales in the region, according to a Reuters investigation.

Tesla reportedly pitched regulators in Sweden and the Netherlands with claims that its Full Self-Driving (FSD) tech is over 7x safer than human drivers. However, independent researchers told Reuters that the stats are misleading because Tesla compares airbag-deployment crashes involving FSD-equipped vehicles with much broader US crash statistics, while also benchmarking newer Teslas against the entire US vehicle fleet, which is significantly older on average.

Despite the flawed metrics, the Dutch regulator approved FSD in April, saying its decision was based on its own “tests, analyses and verifications,” and Tesla is now pushing for EU-wide clearance. A version of FSD is currently available in five European markets.

Exclusive: Tesla presented misleading ‘Full Self-Driving’ safety data to European regulators

Rani Molla6/12/26

Report: Microsoft weighs Xbox spin-off amid major overhaul

Microsoft is reportedly considering spinning out or restructuring its struggling Xbox unit, per The Information. While new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who took over in February, is preparing for layoffs, she’s simultaneously planning to boost investment in its biggest franchises like “Halo,” “Fallout,” and “Minecraft.”

The latest potential shake-up comes as the gaming division battles major headwinds, following a massive 33% plunge in Q3 console sales and a recent move to slash Game Pass prices while removing new “Call of Duty” titles.