Tinder's New Game Tests Your Flirting Skills With AI Personas Powered By OpenAI
Tinder has launched a new game called The Game Game in collaboration with OpenAI. The game aims to help users practice their conversation skills by interacting with an AI voice bot. This initiative is geared towards assisting individuals in improving their communication abilities on the dating platform. The Game Game provides a unique opportunity for users to engage with AI technology to enhance their dating experience. It offers a fun and interactive way to develop conversational skills for successful interactions on Tinder.
Can an AI voice bot help you land a date? That's what Tinder is aiming for with a new game in collaboration with OpenAI. On Tuesday, Tinder launched The Game Game, an experience designed to help you practice your conversation skills by talking to an AI voice, powered by OpenAI's GPT-4o model.
About The Game Game
The Game Game works by dealing you a "stack of cards," each card containing a different AI persona and "meet cute" scenario, like accidentally grabbing someone else's luggage at baggage claim. Your goal is to score a date or a phone number within the time limit. You'll also get a score based on a scale of three Tinder flame icons.
The time limit isn't just there to gamify the experience. "We built the time limit on purpose because this is just a warm-up," said Devyn Simone, Tinder's relationship expert in residence, at the launch event. "This is just a game. It is not designed to replace human conversations. Instead, it's actually designed to encourage real conversations with real people in real life."
There's also a limit of five games per day, lest you forget the real purpose of using Tinder as a dating app for matching with humans, not bots.
AI in Dating Apps
Tinder isn't the only dating app to bring in AI features. Hinge recently launched an AI prompt editor, Grindr is testing an AI wingman, and then there are apps like Rizz and WingAI that are basically AI agents dating on behalf of the user. However, unlike other AI dating app features that are text-based, Tinder's new game brings a sense of realism to practicing your game by using OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode.
As part of the game, users are rewarded with points by saying flirty and engaging things that would normally keep a conversation going. "The AI rewards curiosity and warmth, listening, asking follow up questions," Simone said during the event. "It's not about being slick or having the best line, it's about being human."
Game Dynamics
Additionally, The Game Game was built with social psychology frameworks that inform the scoring and give you tips and recommendations. The game isn't meant to be taken too seriously. "The Game Game is intentionally over the top—a low-stakes, playful experience that feels more like improv than a guide to perfect flirting," said a Tinder spokesperson in a follow-up email.
In other words, the point is to practice your skills in a risk-free environment so you can hopefully feel more confident for the real thing.
Personal Experience
At the event, the author got to test The Game Game. The experience felt very much like a real-life dating scenario, complete with feigned interest and jilted small talk — both enhanced by the surreal premise that they were talking to a robot. The time ran out before a date could be secured, leaving the author with the unique experience of being romantically rejected by a bot.
With a time limit and a specific objective, the author tried harder to keep the conversation going, seeing potential for improvement after a few more sessions. However, the experience felt unrealistic as the author wondered how a human would respond differently to the conversation.
The point of The Game Game is to provide a practice platform so users can feel more comfortable conversing with real humans instead of bots.