Justin McLeod, the CEO of dating app Hinge, is stepping down from his position to launch an AI dating product called Overtone. Match Group, the company behind apps like Hinge, OkCupid, and Tinder is backing Overtone with pre-seed financing and plans to take a “substantial ownership position,” according to a press release.
Overtone was incubated as a project inside of Hinge. McLeod and a dedicated team spent a year developing the idea for the product. Overtone has been described as “an early-stage dating service focused on using AI and voice tools to help people connect in a more thoughtful and personal way.”
McLeod will be replaced by Jackie Jantos, the dating app’s president and chief marketing officer, Match Group announced on Tuesday. “The company’s momentum, including being on track to reach $1 billion in revenue by 2027, gives me full confidence in where Hinge is headed,” said McLeod in a statement. He created the dating app in 2011. McLeod will remain at Hinge as advisor.
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Jantos told TechCrunch at SXSW London about how Hinge will address Gen Z, a market that’s growing increasingly disillusioned with meeting people online. “This is a generation that has grown up with a deep understanding of how digital experiences are created and what they are trying to get out of them,” Jantos told TechCrunch.
Match Group CEO Steve Rascoff will also join Overtone’s board. “We’re proud to have incubated Overtone within Hinge and to now lead its funding round as he builds his next venture,” Rascoff said in a statement.
This comes at a time of an increasing involvement of artificial intelligence in dating apps, for the better or the worse. Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder of Bumble, said she wants to use AI to make “the world’s smartest and most emotionally intelligent matchmaker in existence.” Previously, Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder of Bumble, said she wants to use AI to make “the world’s smartest and most emotionally intelligent matchmaker in existence.”
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Wolfe also faced backlash for proposing the idea of people using AI to stand-in for themselves and date other people’s AIs.
Earlier this year, Meta announced that it is adding an AI assistant to Facebook Dating in an attempt to address “swipe fatigue.” The company said the assistant helps find better matches based on interests and preferences, and it helps write unique prompts tailored to what users are looking for.
Tinder, which reported nine straight quarters of paying-subscriber declines, has also leaned into AI with features that are supposed to help users get more matches. Hinge launched another AI feature just this week called “Convo Starters,” which is supposed to help daters come up with more interesting things to say than the usual small talk.