‘Confusing’ AI dating app Teaser pulled from the market after 3 months, but in steps coach Mila

An AI-based dating app launched in Australia less than three months ago is being shelved this week because users didn’t understand how it worked.

Teaser is gone, to be replaced by an AI dating “coach” named Mila.

An AI dating app launched in Australia less than three months ago will be pulled from app stores this week, as its CEO admits some users just couldn’t wrap their head around it.

Teaser AI, which The Australian reported was quietly launched in June, had used artificial intelligence to give each individual user a chatbot which could, when asked, respond to questions from potential suitors.

However, that function was hard for most to adjust to – and New York-based Teaser AI chief executive Daniel Liss told The Australian some people couldn’t tell the difference.

“People just didn’t understand who was who,” he said.

“So it wasn’t that they were necessarily uncomfortable talking to someone else’s AI, but it was unclear to them.”

Mr Liss said that some users had felt “uncomfortable” with the concept of AI representing them to people whom they had never met.

“Our big takeaway, honestly, was that people were uncomfortable with the notion of the AI representing themselves,” he said.

“The chorus was pretty deafening. They were expecting the AI to be helping them as a third party – almost as a coach, rather than as an extension of themselves.”

Teaser AI will be removed from app stores this week, and Mr Liss and the team behind it will focus their attention in a slightly different direction.

“There’s a famous saying that if you’re not embarrassed about what you’ve shipped, you’re not shipping fast enough. And the only way to learn is to get it in the hands of users,” he said.

“One great indicator of the health of an app is retention. Given our experience on Dispo and seeing what a successful app looks like, the retention numbers never reached the point for Teaser, so it was time.”

AI-influenced dating turns out to not be as straightforward as thought.

Users didn’t know whether they were speaking with a perrson or a machine.

Dispo, a US photo-sharing network, was the company’s first app.

Mr Liss plans to launch a replacement app in the dating space this week which offers what users had been asking: an AI dating coach.

The new app, called Mila, will ask a user questions which gradually get deeper with each response in order to get to know them. It then generates a score which it’ll overlay with other users.

Asked about privacy concerns, Mr Liss said Mila was more about finding out how ambitious or spontaneous a person was. “In our case, you’re not sharing your deepest darkest secrets; you’re saying what you’re here for,” he said.

If a user told Mila one of the most romantic dates they had was a picnic on Bondi Beach, “she” would then ask questions about swimming and other related topics.

“Obviously that example that I just made up is not the most powerful machine learning deduction. But it’s pretty magical when Mila listens to you and the question you’re asking, and interprets what you’re active and you want something romantic and something more serious,” he said.

AI helping someone find a date wasn’t foreign to a younger crowd, Mr Liss said, as most people had “grown up on their devices so the idea of their phone helping them with everything is not strange to them at all”.

“In some ways, it’s even less embarrassing to them to admit that they want help with (dating),” he said.

The app was recognising the disruption of socialisation and dating during Covid-19 and looking to help bridge the gap for those who may be struggling, he said.