Bumble is changing, and daters aren’t happy. Here’s why.

Bumble recently announced a massive overhaul, but online dating sites aren’t rushing into it.

On Monday, Axios published its full interview with the dating app’s founder and CEO, Whitney Wolfe Herd, in which she discussed the previously reported news that Bumble will remove the swipe feature by the end of 2026. However, she also talked about Bumble’s in-development AI dating assistant called Bee, also scheduled for a year-end launch, which was announced during the company’s fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call. society.

Bumble’s adoption of an AI-based product appears to be taking time, as Wolfe Herd commented in May 2024 that she sees AI personas as the future of dating.

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However, people on social media have caught wind of Bumble’s AI plan and are not impressed. A TikTok user who met her partner on Bumble almost two years ago said the app had “lost the plot” with its focus on AI. Another TikToker said she was giving up. Yet another, a single woman, said she “couldn’t spend another moment in this fucking hellscape.”

Wolfe Herd released a statement on their Instagram account on Tuesday to clarify some things.

“A growing part of the tech world seems to believe that human connection can be replicated, automated, or engineered,” she writes. “I believe the opposite, and at Bumble we build the opposite.”

Wolfe Herd said Bumble “has used AI for years to improve security, reduce bad actors, and help people make better, more meaningful connections.” But AI’s next chapter shouldn’t be about replacing human connection. Rather, it should be about strengthening it.

Clarifying that Bumble’s future “is not about automating love,” the CEO said “the best AI should work silently in the background so that real people can fully appear in the foreground.” She also promised “no AI door openers, no AI-generated bios.”

Bumble’s approach is that AI should help people present themselves more authentically, not replace them or speak on their behalf, the company told Mashable. The team believes it is important that women have a place at the table in how AI is applied, and that ethical and responsible use is paramount to Wolfe Herd and Bumble.

Most commenters on Wolfe Herd’s post weren’t sold on Bumble’s AI-driven “future of connection.” The top comment asked what the company was doing to combat deepfakes. Wolfe Herd responded by saying that Bumble has supported legislation to combat deepfakes and is investing in the security of its products and policies. Bumble is working with Partnership on AI, a nonprofit committed to building a framework for the “responsible use of AI-generated media.”

“From detection tools and identity protections to partnerships and legal reform, we believe that protecting women online must evolve as quickly as technology itself,” she wrote.

Another commenter brought up Wolfe Herd’s aforementioned comments that AI personas are the future of dating — at a Bloomberg Tech Summit in 2024, she said on stage: “There’s a world where your dating concierge could go hang out with you with other dating concierges…and then you don’t have to talk to 600 people.” In Tuesday’s Instagram post, Wolfe Herd called the years-old comment a “soundbite” in which “people conducted a speculative thought experiment and turned it into a product announcement for some reason (clickbait).” »

“I was talking about the farthest limits of what AI could theoretically do one day, without saying that Bumble was planning to replace human encounters with robots,” she added. “In fact, the goal was quite the opposite: to use AI to cut through the noise and help people make a real human connection faster.”

Despite the outcry, Bumble is far from the only dating app to add AI features. Tinder and Hinge have also done this, with the former introducing an AI-powered matchmaker, Chemistry, and the latter adding AI features to help write better, quick replies and initial messages.

And at the same time, Bumble is also investing more in IRL events, suggesting it knows there’s an appetite for tech-free dating.