Tinder Pauses AI Photo Editor After User Complaints: ‘Extremely Violating’

One popular dating app has taken its users’ opinions into consideration and made a drastic change to its platform.

Tinder is pausing its AI photo enhancement tool, which the company said was designed to “sharpen blurry images, adjust brightness and exposure, and improve clarity, while keeping your photo authentic to you.”

However, users of the app complained that the feature has a tendency to over-edit their photos to the point that the online dater becomes unrecognizable.

“It was extremely violating. It felt pretty uncanny, to be honest. Those are not my teeth. That’s not what my mouth looks like,” Jeni Rubin, a former Tinder user who claimed the app edited her image without her consent, said during an appearance on Jesse Weber Live on Wednesday, July 29.

Rubin reported that after a break from online dating, she reopened the app to find one of her profile pictures had been edited.

“I think at first, when I saw that they had enhanced the photo without me opting in, and it was just something that had been turned on for me, I was like, ‘Well, let me see what this is about.’ But after seeing the photo, I was extremely put off by the feature,” she explained.

“They [Tinder] could be using a feature to call out folks who are using falsified images,” said Rubin, “but instead, they’re using it to catfish our own photos for us.”

NBC News reported that Tinder’s AI photo feature was still being rolled out and only affected a small percentage of their users. The company has since paused the tool.