In our latest dating app news roundup we look at the launch of a new app that encourages you to give your family members app access to vet your matches and make comments about them.
Elsewhere, Bumble is rolling out a new group dating function, Hinge is rewarding certified ‘good daters’ with little badges on their profile, a dating app company is giving free gas to users, and people cheating on their partners have discovered a new way of communicating with their bits on the side.
Bhava invites family members to check your app matches
A new “matrimonial” app has launched that allows users’ family members to view their relative’s matches, favorite potential dating candidates, and leave match notes.
Sphinx, Inc, the company behind Bhava, says the app is aimed at Indians aged 26–32 whose “parents have started asking about marriage”. Family members having a big influence on dating and marriage decisions is common in Indian culture, and Bhava is pitched as a bridge between that and dating app culture.
On Bhava you can link up to four “family curator” accounts, which the app suggests could be for a parent, aunt or sibling. These curator account-holders can’t swipe or message in the app, but can leave comments about matches in the app, make match suggestions, and bring in offline suggestions from their own contacts.
As well as family members, the app brings astrology into the dating mix, showing you the birth chart of one potential match each day. You also see their family background and their given marriage intent, with the app designed to show users aligned with your background and intent.
If you match with someone you can both send each other a formal letter in the app, before text message chats can begin. This messaging style is billed by the app as “pacing built for marriage, not entertainment”.
There are plenty of matchmaking services and apps marketed at Indians, but Bhava bills itself as the “first dating-and-matrimonial product designed for a generation that has rejected both options on the table: the casual swipe-and-meet dating apps their friends use, and the matrimonial portals their parents once trusted.”
Hily wants “human intelligence” over AI
It can be hard to judge if a zinger someone sent you on a dating app was concocted by a witty potential match or ChatGPT. The likes of Tinder and Bumble, meanwhile, are going all–in on new AI matching features as they attempt to connect with new users.
Reacting to this, dating app Hily has announced that it won’t “replace the human part of connection” in the app because AI is trending. The app’s makers jokingly announced the reintroduction of “human intelligence”, aka “HI”, that powers the app’s match-finding function and chats.
Liubomyr Pivtorak, Hily’s CPO, said: that “the best matches still come from human intelligence: curiosity, vulnerability, chemistry, bad jokes, awkward first messages and all the imperfect things that make dating real. We’ll use technology where it helps, but we’re not rushing to replace the human part of human connection just because AI is trending.”
The “reintroduction” of HI is a fun marketing wheeze, but it does make an interesting point about the dating app AI rush. While dating apps don’t generally offer AI assistance for writing full chat messages, many have brought in AI functions to help with profile-building or things like “AI wingmen”.
Hily uses AI machine learning for its matchmaking, and has in the past said that this is better for match potential than using geographical location or “attractiveness level”. Hily’s point, though, seems to be that when messaging directly with matches, people want to chat with flawed humans rather than receive perfect chatbot-filtered banter.
The app’s creators said: “AI is incapable of bypassing such screening mechanisms as ‘hunch’, ‘gut feeling’ or ‘the ick’… AI is prone to missing viable connections due to its lack of the ability to try things ‘just for kicks’.”
Hily pointed to 2025 research it conducted, that found that 69 percent of Gen-Z US daters polled thought that AI involvement in online dating makes it less authentic. Which may miss the point somewhat, as it wasn’t established if those polled knew if they’d ever confirmed if they’d received AI-written messages or not.
Still, it’s interesting to smell the faint whiff of an AI backlash in the dating app sphere.
Plans? Bumble launching paid-for group dates
Bumble recently announced that it will be “saying goodbye to the swipe”, and replacing that standard ‘liking’ mechanism with something new. While we await what one of the original dating apps promises will be a “revolutionary” swipe replacement, it’s been revealed that Bumble is launching a new group-dating and socialising function.
The new group-dating feature will be called Plans, with Business Insider reporting that an official announcement about it is imminent. Plans will reportedly be a paid-for function, will be piloted in New York, and will bring together small groups of Bumble users for ‘in real life’ meetings.
Payments will be one-offs, allowing a user to RSVP to a Plan meet-up. Users will be allowed to being a friend along, if the friend also pays the RSVP fee.
After the meet-up users will be able to select in Bumble whether they ‘like’ one of the attendees, and if they both like each other, it’s a match in the usual dating app way.
Business Insider reports that Plans will be rolled out across the US if it has a successful launch in New York.
Hinge gives out Signals badges
Hinge has launched a new badge function called Signals, to reward users who use the app consistently and respectfully by doing things like replying to messages and looking at profiles for a long time.
If you’re up to scratch with things like these on the app, you get a little Signals ‘heart’ badge on your profile: a sort of gold star for dating app etiquette excellence. And perhaps a signifier that there’s a decent chance that you’re not a bot or scammer.
To get a Signals badge you need to have gone through selfie verification and have had an account for at least a week. You can edge towards Signals status by then taking your time to view a profile before sending a Like, writing a nice comment on someone’s profile, responding to incoming Likes, and confirming an in-person date.
All very positive, but perhaps it says something about the etiquette of the average dating app user that we need to give people a biscuit for doing what should seem like standard behaviour.
Ben Celebicic, Hinge’s Chief Product and Technology Officer, said: “We built Signals to give people more context by making thoughtful behavior easier to recognize. It is designed to help daters feel more confident recognizing the small actions that often lead to better conversations and real dates.”
Dating app rewards users with gas
Publicity move of the month goes to BLK: a dating app that recently said it was giving $500 gas gift cards to ten competition winners, supposedly because the rising price of gas is affecting people’s dating lives.
The idea was that with the US’ war with Iran driving up gas prices it’s becoming tougher to fill up your car to get to dates, so, the app was helping out by offering up a solution. It seems to have worked, for BLK if not for the wider gas price issue, garnering decent press coverage and plenty of app users attempting to win the highly-flammable prize by tagging friends on social media.
Next up: Tinder giving away propane tanks?
Cheaters discover Notes
This is more ‘cheating app news’ than ‘dating app news’, but we have to end the roundup by mentioning a supposed emerging infidelity trend that caught our attention.
A Queensland-based private investigator named Cassie Crofts has said that people cheating on their partners often use the iPhone Notes app to message with their bit on the side.
Crofts told Nine.com.au: “There’s this ability… most people aren’t aware of, you can share a note with someone. Basically, you could go in, send the note to someone’s Apple ID, [creating] a shared note with them. You guys can write messages to each other in there. Once they’ve been read, you delete them… there’s no trace of what’s going on.”
Until next month!
