Anti-catfish dating app Soulmate wants to scan your face

Updated October 13, 2022

Published May 11, 2021

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A new dating app is hoping to deter cat-fishers by requiring users to scan their face using the selfie camera during the registration process.

SoulMate Dating is a soon-to-be-launched Australian dating app that relies on artificial intelligence to ensure users aren’t uploading fake photos during registration that have been sourced online.

The three-stage face-capture verification process will prompt users to rotate their heads in a certain pattern while making a range of facial expressions to ensure they’re legit.

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The more data points the app’s AI can derive, the better the algorithm can predict that the captured image matches that of the registered user.

“If you don’t get enough data, you’re not going to be accurate enough,” he told Information Age, “but you don’t want the user to spend too much time in the process or feel like it’s not very user-friendly. Finding the balance of that was one of the most challenging parts of the project.”

AI can detect online dating scams in 91% of cases, with data suggesting that an average of $14,000 is lost per reported incident of online dating fraud.

Founder of Soulmate Dating, Miles Hannah, says he found that apps like Tinder and Bumble “had a lot of shortcomings, especially when it came to scammers and fake profiles on the platforms.”

This drive to build an app with “more meaningful connections” led the former systems engineer to embark on a crash course in AI design to create SoulMate dating, which is due to go live within weeks.

Americans lost a total of $143m to online romance scams in 2018, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Of all scams reported, romance fraud costs its victims the most.

Article by

Oli Lipski

Oli is a freelance sex tech researcher based in London. With an MA in Sexual Dissidence, researching sex tech, and a BA in History, researching gender and sexuality, she has a keen understanding of the past, present and future of sex. In addition to SEXTECHGUIDE, you can find Oli’s work on titles such as shado-mag, QueerMajority, UnicornZine and more.

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