Bumble is changing, and daters aren’t happy. Here is the reason.

Bumble announced a major overhaul recently, but online editors aren’t paying attention to it.

On Monday, Axios posted its full interview with the dating app’s founder and CEO, Whitney Wolfe Herd, in which he discussed the news that has already been announced that Bumble is killing the swiping feature by the end of 2026. However, he also talked about Bumble’s in-development AI assistant called Bee, and it is set for the end of the year, which was announced in the call’s 2 Q4 at the company’s launch.

Bumble’s reliance on an AI-powered product seems to be a long time coming, as Wolfe Herd noted in May 2024 that he saw AI personas as the future of dating.

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However, people across social media have caught wind of Bumble’s AI-forward strategy, and they’re not impressed. One TikTok user who met his partner on Bumble nearly two years ago said the app had “lost structure” with its focus on AI. Another TikToker said it was quitting. Still another, a single woman, said she “can’t spend any more time in this incredible hell.”

Wolfe Herd posted a statement on his Instagram account on Tuesday to clarify a few things.

“A growing portion of the tech world seems to believe that human interaction can be replicated, automated, or engineered,” he wrote. “I believe the opposite, and at Bumble, we create 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 the next chapter of AI shouldn’t be about replacing human communication. It should be about strengthening it.”

Clarifying that the future of Bumble “is not about spontaneous love,” the CEO said that “the best AI should work quietly in the background so that real people can be fully seen in the foreground.” He also promised “no AI unlockers, no AI generated bios.”

Bumble’s approach is that AI should support people in telling the truth, not replace them or speak for them, the company told Mashable. The team believes it’s important for women to have a seat at the table in how AI is used, and ethical and responsible use is important to Wolfe Herd and Bumble.

Most of the commenters on Wolfe Herd’s post didn’t believe in the “future of communication” of Bumble’s AI. A top commenter asked what the company is doing to combat deepfakes. Wolfe Herd responded, saying that Bumble supported anti-deepfakes legislation and investing in security across its product and policies. Bumble is working with the non-profit Partnership on AI, a coalition committed to creating a framework for the “responsible use of AI-generated media.”

“From tools to identify and protect your identity to partnerships and legislative changes, we believe that protecting women online must evolve as quickly as the technology itself,” she wrote.

One analyst echoed Wolfe Herd’s aforementioned ideas about AI personas as the future of dating — at the Bloomberg Tech conference in 2024, he said on stage, “There’s a world where your dating concierge can go and match you with other people you’re dating … and then you don’t have to talk to 600 people.” In a Tuesday Instagram post, Wolfe Herd called the age-old comment “a buzzword” where “people take a speculative thought and turn it into a product announcement for some reason (click bait).

“I was talking about the outer edges of what AI could do one day, I’d say Bumble plans to replace human dating with bots,” he added. “In fact, the whole point was the opposite: using AI to cut through the noise and help people get to a real human connection faster.”

Without crying out loud, Bumble is far from the only dating app to add AI features. Both Tinder and Hinge have, too, with the former introducing an AI-powered matchmaker, Chemistry, and the latter adding AI features to help write quick replies and first messages.

And at the same time, Bumble is also investing heavily in IRL events, suggesting it knows there’s a desire for free dating.