Hey all, it’s Janelle here; no, not the AI Janelle; The lifestyle lover, beauty consultant, and relationship coach… and now… interviewer?
I sat down with my husband, Rob Kennedy, the founder and CEO of Swept Dating, to ask him all the questions people always want to know, from why he started the app (while happily married), to what’s wrong with online dating today, to how AI is changing everything.
If you’ve ever been ghosted, catfished, or just plain frustrated with online dating, this Q&A is for you. We go deep into the app’s origin, the biggest problems in the dating industry, and how Swept is different. Built for intentional daters who want more than swiping and small talk.
This one’s personal, real, and so informative Let’s get into it 👇
Q: Can you tell us a little bit about the app, the brand, when it started, its focus, talk us through it, give an intro.
My name is Rob Kennedy, and I’m the founder, CEO, and lead architect of Swept Dating.
Swept Dating is a no gimmicks answer to what disgruntled daters have been asking for. We offer our users an intentional dating platform, providing tools to help daters make a more informed decision during the dating process.
We provide mechanisms that allow them to match with others based on general attributes but also six personality traits.
We believe personality clashes can move to relationship instabilities that often lead to breakups and being able to allow our users to gain critical insights into personality also allow us to custom-tailor their intentional dating experience on our platform, ensuring they’re getting the proper custom advice they need when they need it.
We like to say, we don’t want you to just get swiped, because you deserve to get swept off your feet.
Q: When was the last time you used a dating App personally?
2020 was probably the last time.
Q: Wow.
Yeah. I had been a user of Match, on and off, since the early 2000s. I actually met my first wife on Match in 2010. But that relationship didn’t last, and after my divorce in 2019, I got back on the online dating wagon. I had tried them all, except maybe Tinder. Then, the landscape of dating apps at that point had not really changed all that much, if so, it had gotten worse. Even today, on any given day, you’ll find someone complaining about this app or that app, the dating pool, the behaviors of ghosting, etc. When I exited Amazon in early 2024, I knew exactly what type of app I could build that would serve a problem space that sorely needs a fresh take.
Q: Why not Tinder?
I wasn’t looking for hookups. I think that app is pretty much just for superficial quickies. That’s not what I was looking for.
Q: Got it. So, how has your online dating experience translated into you creating a dating app in 2025?
Right… People tend to look at me strangely when I tell them I created an online dating app. Especially since I’ve been happily married over the last three years with you darling. But when I left Amazon in 2024, OpenAI had already dropped an LLM bomb on the technology industry, and I felt it was an opportunity to take what I had learned about LLMs at Amazon and use them in a way that comparative data analysis could be beneficial. I had always had an idea for a dating app in the back of my mind for decades, and I know you and I had discussed your ideas for some time before, but never really had the opportunity to pull the trigger until now, and I had a gut feeling the market is still being underserved.
Swept Dating is a culmination of years of our discussions we’ve had, and of questions like “why can’t the app do that?” or “what if it did this”. I’ve taken features that work well in different apps and put my spin on them. We’ve also got a lot of original ideas like anti-ghosting technology that helps prevent that behavior on our platform.
Q: What is the data telling you about daters in 2025? The data about what Gen Z daters are doing versus Millennials, versus Gen X daters, which is the cohort you started with, versus the very emotional experiences people have dating which are out of your control? Eventually, you’ve got to meet up and look at the other person and not screw up the date, right? Swept can’t solve that problem, but that’s the whole point. How do those two connect for you?
One thing I’ve learned while being on the other end of the dating app screen is that match making systems are straight forward to implement.
What’s hard is ensuring the matched users are going to “click” in person. At the end of the day, virtual attraction is subjective, and it comes down to in-person chemistry and your own educated, but also heart-felt, decision. That’s something that no app, no AI, no digital, emotionless construct, will be able to solve 100%. Nore should it. What we’re hoping to achieve, however, is to give you the tools to make a better decision on whether to meet the match or not.
To evaluate your match after the first date and have that feed back into your future matches if that first date turned out to not be your person.
To circle back to your question, there used to be a larger stigma to meeting someone online, but these days I think the statistics I saw are roughly 60-70% of couples have reportedly met online. However, even with that startling data, what I saw when doing my market research was a lot of negative sentiment towards dating apps. No matter what your generation, most are complaining about the quality of their matches. So many singles decide to quit online dating apps. They don’t think they’re worth the subscription, or monotonous pain and suffering dating someone that turns out to not be who they say they were online. In my research, I found a pattern of three core problems that major dating apps were continuing to drop the ball on and address properly: catfishing, ghosting, and poor-quality matches.
Even with recent announcements of more AI integrations within the bigger apps, I still saw a lot of opportunities for a disrupter to come in and be absolutely customer obsessed for intentional daters. That’s where Swept Dating comes in.
Swept Dating is that customer obsessed platform for intentional daters. No matter what your generation, there are those who are dating with intention.
Looking for their person, not just a one-night stand. Platforms have failed the intentional dater who is perpetually frustrated with those three core issues among all dating apps.
Q: Interesting. It seems like a lot of online platforms these days are moving toward keeping users on the platform. They’d rather you spend time with live feeds or messaging than promoting matches, meeting up, and moving off the app. So, are you a Hinge clone? Like, we want to be deleted too, or is Swept Dating something different?
Well, I think Hinge’s claim is they hope you delete their app, but in the end, I think the unsaid goal there is they expect you to come back if your match doesn’t work out. Right?
I want Swept Dating to be the tool that helps you find your person, but beyond the lip service, actually be useful in helping you make better dating decisions.
At some point we expect you to find someone and delete all dating apps forever. Until that day comes, we want to be your match maker, your dating concierge, your wingman (or woman), and your relationship coach. That’s our differentiating approach to online dating, in that we’re offering a tool to making mindful and intentional relationship decisions. I wasn’t a fan of Hinge’s interface, and I think they’re focused on getting you to in-person dates but lack the additional tools to ensure those matches are a good fit. They claim to make great dates but Swept is looking to make great long-lasting relationships.
I’m focused on metrics related to successful relationships vs dates or time on the app or subscriptions. Our goal is to get our users out and dating with quality matches and reduce the exhaustion that comes with dating low-quality matches on other apps, but in the end, making a long-lasting connection.
Q: So, like Hinge, you’re going to have a churn problem and constantly looking for new users?
Yeah, if your goal is to keep users on the platform, then that’s a problem, but if your goal is to make long lasting relationships, then it’s a goal. Saying that probably has some SaaS VC’s eye twitching right now, but it’s true. Loneliness is always going to be a human condition that can be helped to some degree with technology. The question is which service has the best technology? I think Swept Dating is a breakthrough in some regards. We do want to make sure people are leaving the app with a positive sentiment. We don’t want people dropping Swept dating because they ran into one of the core problems we’re trying to eliminate. So, if there’s an opportunity to get customer feedback, we’ll ask for it. We want to constantly be learning from our users; new, ongoing, and those leaving.
Q: You mentioned roughly you want to be the all-in-one shop for online dating. What does online dating mean to you? You’re married now to an amazing woman. You’re not in “the game” anymore.
It’s funny you call it “the game”. That’s part of the problem we want to solve; is the exhaustion intentional daters are having with “the games” that are played.
I haven’t been dating for the last five years, but I have been there and done that for decades. I think our own dating experiences are valid and drive a lot of the decisions that determined how Swept Dating is planning to solve the three core problems of dating. However, everyone’s experience is different. I’m aware of that. I’m plugged into social media daily and interacting with many who are unhappy with online dating. Until now, there still hasn’t been an app that provides all the tools needed for intentional daters.
I’m a technologist and problem solver. I also tend to be customer obsessed with whatever I put my mind to because I try to solve problems that I’ve run into myself.
My problems tended to revolve around low-quality matches. I married one of those in my first marriage, and that didn’t work out in the end for various reasons.
Our marriage works well, because our personalities are a much closer match. We didn’t have the tools that Swept Dating provides when we were dating, but I know they would have put us together; considering how open we were in discussing our wants and needs, and the types of people we were.
But for past matches, my mind goes immediately to “if only there was a way to know back then”… well, with personality tests and AI pattern recognition and analysis, there’s a tool for that and it’s built into Swept Dating.
I think these types of experiences are prevalent throughout society, especially those reported by online daters on social media. So, I know there’s an opportunity to fill a need there.
Finding your person isn’t just a catch phrase. It’s a journey and workflow that our users are going through. The inevitable end is being with your forever-person. Where some apps are perfectly ok serving up low-quality matches, as long as you’re dating, we’re focused on providing matches and then the tools to make mindful decisions on whether to go on a date. We have a personality analysis tool that grades your personality traits against that of your match’s personality traits with green, yellow, or red flags. This is one of those tools that we provide to help ensure that you come into a dating decision armed with things you’ll likely match on and some areas where you should look out for. For example, the Honesty-Humility trait is one we always want to keep an eye on when you’re considering going on a date with someone. If they’re weak on honesty, they’ll likely not be a great fit for you when honesty is a key requirement.
Q: Makes sense. Like Hinge, you want to help people delete the app, but unlike Hinge and other apps, you’re offering features for daters a wholistic decision to say yes to a date vs the shotgun approach which leads to online dating exhaustion.
Exactly. We want to help our users find a great match, make informed decisions, communicate in a safe environment, schedule and have a great date, and if it works out, delete the app that led you to your forever-person.
Q: After 2020, the dating world seems to have shifted. It seems the next generation coming up aren’t even dating in person. How do you plan to adapt to the younger generations dating dynamics?
Great question and is relevant to what I see online today. A lot of people are choosing to be single because they’ve checked out after running into some really horrible experiences either with dating apps, social media, etc. The teens today are the future young daters in the next 4-5 years. They’re into messaging over calling. They tend to not really date, more or less, they “hang out.” So, there’s a shift there that’s interesting. Cultures are dynamic and so what worked for people like me certainly may not work for others. I think a lot of online dating apps don’t know how to best integrate AI models that are helpful and not going to hurt the dating experience. Things like auto-writing profiles or telling the user what to say in a chat. They’re rolling these features in a slipshod way, and I think adoption is mixed based on generation and culture.
Younger, less-socially adept generations seem to openly accept these tools. However, a lot of users consider them cheating or not presenting yourself honestly.
I think we’re the only app that allows our users to opt-out of our AI integrations (Shout-out to the Paige at the EFF). But the AI integrations we do have are done relatively tastefully.
Q: Real quick, who’s Paige at the EFF?
Paige Collings works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and wrote an article recently on how Dating Apps were not doing enough to consider user privacy, especially with leveraging public AI models. When I read that article, I felt there was an opportunity to ensure users were informed on how we used and hosted our models.
Q: Ok, gotcha. You were talking about Swept Dating’s AI integrations…
Right. As I was saying, we allow our users to Opt-out of AI integrations if they desire, but our AI integrations are done tastefully. For example, we won’t write your chat message, but we’ll provide AI-generated icebreakers based on your match’s profile, allowing you to keep a conversation moving. We won’t write a fake profile for you, but we’ll help polish what you’ve written about yourself, who you’re looking for, and you’re ideal first date. We feel this isn’t deception, but another tool to help you put your best foot forward.
So, there’s a lot of reasons that suggest the next cohort of daters coming in the next few years won’t be dating the way we did in the 20th century. But there’s an opportunity there to help them make meaningful connections in a way that makes the most sense to them, in an honest way, and I believe that’s what that generation is seeking the most; being genuine and honest.
Q: Slight pivot here, can you tell me a little bit more about the company? What inspires you to do this?
Like how almost all of the major apps started, the company is bootstrapped and run by myself. I started the company in early 2024; started development the day I left Amazon and worked on the core technology for about a year. I developed the MVP of the mobile app but then hired an amazing developer to help refactor that app using Flutter. It was a great decision. I’ve since picked up the language and technology and am implementing new features on both front and back end. I soft-launched Valentines day 2025 and have been working on new features every week.
I’m continually motivated to make the world better in some way; no matter what you do, give back to the world something positive.
I wonder where we’ll be in 20-30 years; another generational cohort, Gen Beta, begins to deal with dating in an era of globally adopted virtual reality and augmented reality, with AGI a reality.
It’s a little scary. But it drives me to try and keep traditional courting, dating in person, and providing the tools to help make amazing connections a reality, today, while still having empathy and support for the upcoming generations that have a different perspective on what’s best for them.
Q: That’s a scary thought; with how things are going, it’s horrific to me to think where we potentially could go. Like be legit plugged into a matrix.
Yeah, I can’t imagine that being a reality, but it’s hard to say with newer generations where we’ll be, and how open they are now to adopting razor edge technologies like AI. I guess, when AGI hits, we’ll all be adapting to a new world.
Q: About the App, how are you adopting feedback? What’s your thought process on adopting new features?
We have a few feedback mechanisms in place right now that allow feedback to get into the development queue. Traditional help feedback forms, exit forms, and app usage analytics.
We’ll use that feedback to make decisions on what features are making a positive impact, and perhaps which features aren’t.
Q: And AI? What’s driving the design and integration there?
Like everyone, the release of ChatGPT in Jan 2023 woke up the world. I was with the Alexa Shopping team within Amazon at the time that hit, and the general unspoken vibe there was the feeling of an ‘oh shit’ moment. At that point, Alexa and Google were considered the expected future leaders in AI personal assistants. That got up-ended in 2023. Everyone is now considering how to integrate an LLM or build their own. At Amazon, when I left in 2024, I led a project integrating a custom LLM model into Alexa, and as we know now, the Anthropic investment and integration is moving along for Amazon. But there’s still no guarantee for success with so many competitors for Amazon and Google in the field now.
Like Amazon, dating apps were caught with their pants down on AI integrations, and are finding their way now on how to best integrate that technology into their apps.
There are some shady apps out now, that are used to fake a profile, photos and chat conversations. I don’t think we’ll ever get to a point where we have those in the Swept Dating app.
Beyond safety systems leveraging AI models, it seems younger users are expecting some level of AI integration at this point. I think integrated matching and analysis tools are the best and most honest way to integrate AI into online dating, and that’s where Swept Dating focuses our integrations.
If there’s an opportunity to leverage Large Language Models in a way that doesn’t go against our core value of Authenticity, then we’ll consider it.
Q: There’s a recent trend with virtual companions and opinions from some in the industry that expect virtual personas. Eugenia Kuyda, the CEO of Replika, said, essentially, “My plan is people are going to date AI bots that will coach them up into being fully formed people, then we’ll release them into the dating pool, and they will have confidence and self-assuredness.” Do you plan on coaching people in a similar way?
Well, that reminds me of those shady dating courses for guys, where they taught NLP on how to seduce women. They used to have gangs of these guys going out into clubs in LA testing out their learned skills of “negging.” Remember that? There was a book called The Game by Neil Strauss, about it.
Anyway, that’s the same vibe I get. You’ll get a bunch of guys trying the same LLM-generated pickup lines. That future will suck.
I think a better approach is offering analysis tools to help an individual make their own decisions as their authentic self. If there’s any coaching involved, it should be centered around personal self-esteem boosting vs do this or that to hit on the hotties.
Q: So, you won’t say no to a coaching bot integration in the future?
I don’t think there’s an AI integration in the future for Swept that would promote a non-authentic version of yourself. That’s a core principle, and a form of catfishing in my opinion.
Q: What’s the challenge there for Swept Dating if apps like X with Grok and now Facebook are going to integrate virtual companions? How do you compete with that?
It is happening like right now, whether it’s good or bad. What you’re suggesting seems… hard for them. So, you say, “We’ve got to get people into genuine long-term relationships.” I honestly wonder about that, based on the younger folks who are now saying, “I just don’t want to leave the house. I would rather just talk to this AI. I have too much social anxiety.”
Apps like yours and others are trying to get people to leave the house. So, how do you compete with that overly compliant AI companion and a generation of shut-ins?
It’s crazy to think about, but yes, we do need to think about it and adapt to that. I’m an optimist though, and I think long term, the human condition for in-person connections will eventually override the anxious conditions the younger generations are dealing with.
Another data point, but there’s no greater time in our history to start to begin to worry about the effects these cultural changes are having (including dating apps that glorify those cultural shifts) than now, with birth rates on the continual decline in western civilization, it is only a matter of time before population collapse becomes a greater day-to-day concern.
So yes, we need to continue to have PSAs on why real and meaningful in-person relationships are better and needed for our species to survive, but also, do so in a way that is empathetic to these younger generations.
Life will be hard at times, feelings do and will get trampled, and your emotions of anxiety are valid too. If an AI coach should do anything, it should be a life coach quoting you lines from Rocky and David Goggins.
Seriously though, the research on the younger generations is concerning, but that doesn’t mean we just give up and just plug in to the matrix. I run an online dating company for humans. I’m also a father of a Gen Alpha and now Gen Beta, and I don’t want that future for them. So, it’s important to continue to fight to help create and support meaningful relationships, while also being empathetic to those who find it hard.
There’s an opportunity there for technology but also just offering human touch of understanding and empathy. I don’t want to sound like too much doom and gloom. There is a large swath of Gen Alpha and Beta that don’t fit the mold of others in their generation. Kids that are not raised on digital devices, so there’s a cohort there that should not be dismissed either.
Q: Back to AI, everyone is using it to some degree. Swept Dating is using it in a tasteful way as you say, helping to polish profiles. You’re helping people make better dating decisions. However, what’s preventing your users running to ChatGPT and coming up with a description that doesn’t actually reflect them? Pasting that into their description, uploading an AI generated photo, etc.
Right. The Instagram and TikTok glam-filters on the photos issue, right? Same thing as uploading photos of you 20 years younger. It’s going to be a problem, and a lot of these can still be detected by the human eye.
But, in the end, if you decide to, you’re going to have to go meet someone in person, and if your photo doesn’t represent you, as you are within reason, you’ll get found out pretty quickly.
Again, this is the catfishing problem we’re trying to solve, so we have both manual and automatic feedback mechanisms for this. The same goes for how you describe yourself. If ChatGPT is hyping you up in a way you don’t typically speak or write, or worse, saying completely false things, it’ll get found out when you message a match, or start to speak during your date. So, you definitely want to come across as best as you can, but in an authentic way.
Our polish with AI tool refactors what you already wrote about yourself and just makes it more digestible. We offer no filters for photos beyond color adjustment.
Q: How are you adding AI feedback into Swept Dating? There’s obviously a messaging feature. Are you adding messaging features that say “Hey, that’s not allowed?”
Yes, we also have those safety-related integrations too. If you send a message that we determine to be inappropriate, it’ll ping you to reevaluate before sending. This isn’t anything new among dating apps, but is another way we’re integrating AI into our system; and our checks take it a bit further. Using LLMs, we have a better understanding of what to look for to ensure a broader safety net. It’s not just about sending eggplant emojis. For example, sending PII in a message, bank account numbers, digital wallet addresses, phone numbers. These all trigger a warning or are blocked completely.
Additionally, part of our intentional dating mechanisms is our conversation progression service that nudges users to respond after a period of time. It will begin to prompt you to start planning a date after 7 days of continuous conversation. These are features that we believe delineate our ability to serve the intentional daters vs people who just want to chat online.
Q: How do you continue to mediate and coach your users through the post-date relationship process? Two users match and go on date through Swept Dating, exchange numbers, and continue their conversations off your platform. How do you interact with them then?
This is something I’ve considered, and I know some other apps are considering as well. My gut is to provide a different app in the Swept family of tools. For first, second and third date advice, that’s something we can think about integrating into the dating app today. But I don’t think having an active account on a dating app while forming or continuing to grow a relationship is healthy behavior, in that you either grow a relationship off-app, or you gracefully move on to another match. There’s no grass-is-greener behavior that is ultimately healthy for growing a relationship in the present.
So, I think long term, there’s an app for that. Continuing to pull from the data that was developed when you both matched on Swept Dating, but also, giving solid advice going forward into the honeymoon phase so to speak, transitioning to long-term, and when it’s right for marriage, dealing with life events, intimacy, and more. This is where an LLM model and contextual data like personality is going to be useful.
If for whatever reason, that relationship doesn’t work, that data can be useful too. Perhaps your “should-haves” turned into “must-haves.” People are dynamic and can change, so there’s an opportunity there to glean that feedback and present it to the user so they can learn and adapt.
Q: These AI models can’t be cheap. Are you running different kinds of models or are you sending everything to ChatGPT?
We’re using a variety of models for different jobs. We do have a relationship with Microsoft utilizing OpenAI models, but we also have relationships with AWS as well. It really depends on the purpose that a given model is used. I’ve also developed custom systems like our conversation management service that leverages Swept’s own models. The decision on what to use basically comes down to what provides the best results for our customers vs building something in-house.
Q: Are you running those in the cloud or on people’s phones?
Everything is done in our private cloud. As of now, there’s no plan on running models on customer devices. I don’t think that would be a great experience in any way. All processing is handled at our end and is relatively fast. Models are getting faster, and more affordable each quarter it seems, so we’re always looking at new models, and seeing how our own models can improve.
Q: AI models are trained on data, and online dating platforms capture and contain a lot of personal data that could be catastrophic to someone if it were released. Case in point, the recent data leaks from the Tea App, and other online dating apps prior, released personal data of their users, including their chats. Have you thought about the planning for how big of a target your data is, and how it will become more of a target as you continue to build on the data people trust you with? Their AI conversations, innermost secrets, feelings, and sexual preferences?
Constantly. I think about this a lot. I have always built applications from a security first perspective and know there are tradeoffs for speed to market. Sometimes, it seems, those tradeoffs are catastrophic, like the case with Tea App. So, when I build software, I want to make sure we’re following best practices for coding systems that protect our user’s data throughout the entire lifecycle.
I think this is paramount for any app provider, to ensure that their customers’ data is safe and secure. We follow GDPR guidelines, even though we’re not in Europe yet. We also follow guidance from the EFF on allowing informed consent regarding our AI integrations. We allow our users to opt-out of AI integrations and any model training. I don’t think any other dating app does that to my knowledge.
Privacy is paramount.
Q: The Tea App had their ID verification data leaked. With legislation passed or incoming to force age verification, what integrations have you done and what’s your opinion on this push for age verification? Do you think platforms like Apple and Google need to do it? Since they’re a core component for bringing users to Swept Dating, which is not for children.
Yeah, our platform is 18+ and not for children. To that point, we’ve implemented an ID verification mechanism that does verify age, but our MVP didn’t require it. It’s on our roadmap this year to integrate it into our onboarding process. All users will be verified. At least one of your photos will be verified.
However, I believe the platforms will need to provide mechanisms for age verification. I know Google has plans to do this, using AI to determine age, however I don’t think that will cut it legally speaking. At some point, age verification via government issued ID will be required.
I am a champion for this, because it’ll cut out all catfishing and fake profiles. With facial recognition models, there’s no more hiding. Keep that shit on a social media platform; Swept Dating is for real daters only.
So, to your point, we partnered with Stripe as our ID verification vendor right now; they store your government identity information when we do an ID verification, but we use the information gleaned from your ID to determine age verification. Your birthday and name are updated in our systems, so there’s no faking birth dates and names.
I’m ok with platforms doing this, but the overall cost is nominal for a platform that exists to be customer obsessed. As cloud platforms continue to offer these services, the prices will continue to go down. So, I’m also not against doing this ourselves on our systems right now. In the end, it is to the benefit for everyone that someone does it. No sense doing nothing and continuing to argue about it. That’s why I made the decision to eventually make it mandatory on our platform.
Q: Speaking of Apple and Google platforms; they’re no longer allowed to prevent alternative payment systems. Your app has three pricing tiers: Free, Basic, and Premium. Does this change or impact your pricing, and are you using or planning to use an alternative payment system?
Yeah, I think that was a fair decision. I know a lot of different companies have been fighting that fight for some time. Apple and Google’s systems have significant cuts. Today, we’re using both for ease of use for our users. I think there’s a longer-term plan to move to a central payment system we manage. It’ll make more sense when we implement a web-based version of the app. Our prices are very competitively priced for what we offer, but if I can get those down even more, our subscribers win in the end, so that’s all that matters.
Q: Are you planning to use a service like “Stripe”?
Maybe. It depends on what best serves our customers and what can maintain best security and privacy of their data. We do have a partnership with them already for ID verification, and there are benefits to using a 3rd party for sure, and we should consider that when pondering the costs of app store fees today. Subscription and payment systems aren’t necessarily trivial to develop in-house.
Q: There’s been talk about platform shifts for a while. People are going to be using online dating platforms differently, because of AI tools or because the AI tools are helping them find one another more efficiently, or better. A lot of the platform shift I hear about is, “Oh, we’re going to have new devices. We’re going to have new form factors. People are just going to talk to AI now. Maybe our personal agent would go on a preliminary date for us with someone else’s agent, and then say “You should go on this date with this person we found on Swept Dating”? Because the agents have checked all the boxes, and they know your personal details, wants and needs. That takes the mobile devices and websites away. How are you thinking about that level of platform shift?
I think about this often, especially when we go back to the dynamics of current generations’ dating patterns. Their openness to leveraging tools to do the hard work of searching and finding someone to date. I don’t know if there’s a non-visual component that works; there’s going to be a visual component to that future, but the ability to have a personal assistant do the digging and weeding for you is intriguing. Swept Dating’s match system is getting there, in the sense, we dig a little deeper than most other apps, by doing a personality inventory, and from that, present matches based on what personality traits work best together. It’s still up to you to say yes or no, I want to talk to this person. I think it’s possible at some point soon that your personal agent will experience life in real time with you, via wearable glasses or other mechanisms, that can give advice based on your interactions. Clearly, there’s a lot of privacy concerns there that must be thrown out the door with that kind of future, and I don’t think that’s for everyone, so the traditional form factors won’t disappear right away.
Q: But do you see a world where your personal agent is doing the dating for you?
In a sense. To use a programming term, it’s more about multi-threading your life generally. I don’t think many experience a life with a personal assistant today, so it’ll be a paradigm shift for those who now can have an AI agent handle mundane things like order dinner, schedule things, reply to emails, or other dynamic tasks that can be done without physical presence. Taking it a step further, tasking an agent to “date” another agent, is an interesting proposal, but not necessarily an efficient one. I can see an agent handling the filtering of candidates, perhaps reaching out to first-round picks for additional details, that could then be responded to by those candidates’ agents. That might be considered “Dating” for an AI Agent. I think you’re still using a search filter and matching algorithm to present the final round candidates to the user. So, that can be an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server on Swept’s side allowing additional context to be provided, or some other future mechanism. We aren’t there yet within our own systems, but the future of multi-agents, or turtles all the way down approach, is intriguing and one that will likely happen for integrations of all types of workloads. Our own internal agents could serve up that additional context for users who’ve permitted it and allowed it to be shared to a broader audience of agents.
Again, I think the privacy concerns there are valid, and this is pretty much why today, online dating apps are a silo of personal data that I think should stay that way for various reasons.
Q: How are you going to deal with competitors who are working on this same thing? Who’s your direct competitor, and what’s next for Swept Dating?
I think Swept Dating has an advantage in that we leverage concepts that have worked for various dating apps in the past and presented them in a way that makes them available but not mandatory. Our algorithm doesn’t require your personality inventory, but it does help create better matches. I would say our most direct competitor would be Hinge, and as far as I know, they’re guessing at personality traits based on what you write vs a valid inventory test. I don’t think that’s the most efficient approach. So going forward, I think Swept Dating is better positioned to understand our user’s personalities a bit better. With future trait tests like attachment style, an anxiety test, etc. There’s an opportunity for users to get to further understand themselves and their potential best match at a deeper level, before making an emotional investment.
These are steps that I believe are outmaneuvering the competition in a positive way for the intentional daters on our platform. I’m excited to bring that forward in a way that supports our users, provides honesty and clarity to them, and builds not just great dates, but great long-term relationships.
Q: Rob, it’s been great to have you let us know what’s going on with Swept Dating.
Thank you, appreciate it.
I hope you found this chat as insightful as I did — and maybe even a little bit inspiring. Whether you’re single, newly back in the dating pool, or just curious about the future of intentional relationships, Swept Dating is doing something refreshingly different.
🔗 Want to try Swept Dating? Download the app on iOS or Android and take the free personality test to get started.
— Janelle
