eharmony CEO Talks Artificial Intelligence with VentureBeat

CEO of eharmony Grant Langston has been speaking to VentureBeat about the benefits of using artificial intelligence in online dating.

He explained that the way eharmony uses AI means it’s always learning about a user’s preferences and can often be better at knowing what they are looking for than they do themselves.

Langston said to VentureBeat: “We tend to think of ourselves in certain ways, and we may even intellectually think we like certain things.

“But when presented with a choice on a dating site, you’re not making it intellectually, but at a much deeper level of the brain.”

The algorithm reacts to whether a user chooses to message or ignore certain people, and can therefore suggest better matches.

Langston insisted that his company works hard to only suggest the best matches to its users. This is despite the fact that if a dating company provides a good service, it loses a customer.

“Our process of learning about you has gotten much better over all these years. That’s filtered in to changes in the way the sites work, from the top to the bottom. The better our technology responds to you, the better your experience.

“We’ve taken the approach that if you leave and you’re happy and you found the love of your life, you’re going to tell people, and it’s going to be the best marketing that we can do.”

The interview finished with Langston saying that the most successful AI works when people don’t even notice it. 

“If we’re doing our job well, you don’t know anything that we’re doing – but we’ve got a bunch of guys in white coats behind the curtain engineering this stuff and trying to make it happen. That’s the magic of our business.”

This approach differs from features like Tinder Picks and Hinge’s Most Compatible, which clearly highlight integrated AI capabilities at the forefront of the app.

Read the full interview here.