At the end of last year, Justin McLeod, the founder of the dating app Hinge (thanks to which New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani met his wife, Rama Duwaji), left his role as CEO to create another app called Overtone. He felt that, even though the digital revolution has expanded the possibilities for meeting people and finding a romantic partner like never before, the abundance of choice has left people with fewer guideposts for making decisions
Users are overwhelmed by a nearly endless catalog of possibilities, faces and descriptions. McLeod decided to add artificial intelligence (AI) to the mix. That in itself is nothing new: many other dating apps are already embracing AI, not always to users’ satisfaction. When Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd announced earlier this year that her app would eliminate the swipe feature in favor of an AI-based matching system, the reaction on social media was mostly negative.
But Justin McLeod believes that using AI in his new project can truly be a game-changer. “Overtone is not a dating app. By that I mean it’s not a social platform with profiles that reduce people to stats, quotes and photos. There are no opaque, algorithmic feeds trained on split-second impulses. And there’s no juggling likes, matches and chats across many people at once,” he explains.
But how exactly does it work?
The service is primarily voice and audio-based, powered by artificial intelligence. The app eliminates almost all of the elements that currently define online dating, explains AI expert Drew Glover. “No profiles. No photos. No swiping. No algorithmic feed,” he continues. “Instead, you talk to an AI in your own voice. It learns your personality, your values, your communication style. And it makes only the introductions it believes are genuinely worth making, with a transparent explanation of why it thinks two people belong together.”
It all started with platforms based on lengthy compatibility questionnaires. While Tinder popularized instant decisions based on a single photograph, Hinge tried to shift the focus to personality through questions and conversations, relegating physical appearance to a secondary role. But now, Glover notes, “Overtone wants to remove the biggest decision of all: the choice between countless potential partners.
The concept comes at a time when dating app fatigue is becoming increasingly apparent. “Seventy-eight percent+-9* of dating app users report burnout,” Glover says, pointing to various studies. “The promise is real, [on Overtone], people judged [other users] less on photos and more on how they actually think, speak and connect.”
In the past, numerous dating apps have attempted to launch projects that did away with photos altogether. And the result? An overwhelming percentage have failed. On January 15, 2013, OkCupid proclaimed it was “Blind Love Day” and removed all profile photos from the site for several hours. The initiative was a flop. However, in his book, Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity, What Our Online Lives Tell Us about Our Offline Selves, the app’s co-founder, Christian Rudder, explained that after asking the participants how the dates had gone, the answers made it clear that the physical appearance of the two people had little to do with the outcome of the meeting.
Attraction is something else entirely
Verónica Alcanda, founder of Alcanda Matchmaking, a service based in Madrid, believes that Overtone’s proposal is interesting because it challenges one of the biggest problems with dating apps today: the fact that they’ve turned the search for a partner into an excessively visual process.
“Initially, eliminating the visual aspect can help focus attention on much more relevant aspects for building a solid relationship: personality, values, emotional intelligence, communication style, a sense of humor and life goals. However, I also don’t think we should go to the opposite extreme. Physical attraction exists and plays an important role in a relationship. Denying that would be unrealistic.”
She argues that the issue isn’t eliminating physical appearance from the equation, but rather changing the order of things: “When you first discover who that person is — how they think, how they relate to others and how they make you feel — physical attractiveness is usually perceived very differently. Often, admiration, emotional connection and compatibility also contribute to the attraction.”
She explains that more and more clients are seeking out her services after they’ve spent years using dating apps. “They’re not abandoning technology because it has failed, but because they’re discovering that having thousands of options doesn’t mean making better decisions,” she says. “What they’re looking for is no longer quantity, but discernment. They want a professional to filter, evaluate and select the people that they have the highest probability of building a stable and happy relationship with.”
Alcanda believes that while AI will be a tremendous ally for people in professions like hers, where the job is to match people with potential partners, it will not be able to replace what humans bring to the process: “the ability to understand people in all of their complexity and make decisions that go far beyond data. Algorithms find affinities… and professionals find compatibilities.”
“The real story,” says Glover, “isn’t that AI is replacing swiping. It’s that we’re entering an era where AI doesn’t just recommend content, music, or products. It recommends people. And that’s a much bigger shift than most people realize.”
Dr. Arthur Aron, the lead author of a study that famously featured a set of 36 questions to fall in love, believes that photographs can muddy the waters of the process. “The medium shapes the message. When a platform is designed around photographs, interactions tend to be superficial. In contrast, when it’s built around writing, it fosters a level of personal openness that actually predicts the success of a relationship,” he asserts.
There’s already a waiting list to join Overtone.
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