A recently-released iOS and Android app has found a new way to filter the online dating pool – by people’s lookalikes.
Dating.ai lets you search through the databases of various online dating services to find people who look like certain celebrities, or people you know.
The product claims to be the first dating app to use a face search feature, saying: “This powerful feature lets you instantly see the people you are really interested in meeting.
“Other dating apps profit while you waste time swiping through thousands of profiles to maybe find someone you like.”
After downloading, the mobile app lets you choose from a list of celebrities, say Beyonce or Justin Bieber, then scans the databases of various dating sites like Tinder, PlentyOfFish and Match.com, for users who look like them.
But this isn’t all it does – users of the app can also upload their own pictures, or use Facebook, to find online daters who look like people they know.
After it finds the lookalikes, the app then links to each person’s dating profile, whether on PlentyOfFish or Tinder.
According to Buzzfeed, Tinder contacted the founder of Dating.ai, Heath Ahrens, to say the app violated its terms and conditions, as the company doesn’t allow automated scraping of its API.
Tinder’s terms prohibit the “use of any robot, bot, spider, crawler, scraper, site search/retrieval application, proxy or other manual or automatic device, method or process to access, retrieve, index, “data mine,” or in any way reproduce or circumvent the navigational structure or presentation of the Service or its contents.”
Another spokesperson from PlentyOfFish also told Buzzfeed it was trying to get the app removed from the App Store, which Ahrens said he was unaware of.
Despite offering a free trial after first downloading the app, Dating.ai costs £7.99 for unlimited searches, the ability to view full profiles and an ad-free service.
Check it out here.