People say real love is hard to find, but Bumble is stepping up to the plate to make sure the next person whose profile you swipe right on is more real than fake.
The popular female-founded dating app announced it is integrating A.I. technology into its new "Deception Detector" to help cut out catfishing by blocking scam accounts and fake profiles.
In a post penned by Lidiane Jones and published five days ago, the Bumble CEO wrote, "Earlier this week we unveiled Deception Detector™, Bumble Inc.’s latest AI-driven tool that helps identify spam, scams, and fake profiles, aiming to take action before they ever reach our members."
"Remarkably, of those accounts identified as spam/scam profiles, our testing has found that Deception Detector™ supported blocking 95% of these accounts automatically, and within the first two months of its introduction, we saw member reports of spam, scams, and fake accounts reduced by 45%."
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According to Merriam-Webster, the dictionary defines the act of catfishing as being "a person who sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or deceptive purposes."
Bumble's move to combat catfishing could be a game-changer for singles, as an alarming number of dating app users have fallen victim to this unique but pervasive style of deception.
Per digital safety platform Aura's website, "half of Americans who have used a dating app in the past five years have experienced catfishing," and the number is double that from five years ago.
The site explains that scammers operate quickly to gain your trust before phishing for information they can use to scam you. In some cases, they'll reel you in so that they can directly ask for money or gifts.
Scammers will also invent ways to avoid meeting up in person or find excuses to get out of making video calls so that they're able to conceal their true identities.
In one instance, a Florida man was conned out of nearly $500,000 after an online scammer developed a "relationship" with him and asked him to invest in cryptocurrency, according to Cybernews.
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Jones' LinkedIn post noted that a whopping third of all app users are concerned about being scammed:
"With scam concerns topping the list for 33% of daters, closely followed by 32% who are worried that the person they’re talking to may not be who they say they are, we’re on a mission to ease those fears."
And the "Deception Detector" isn't Bumble's only A.I.-powered tool to help assuage users' fears.
The app previously integrated the technology into its "Private Detector," a tool that automatically recognizes and blurs potentially inappropriate images shared while messaging.
Other ways to know if you're being catfished? Look out for profiles that appear too good to be true.
Additionally, keep an eye out for "financial distress" stories, "Cyber Guy" Kurt Knutsson wrote on Fox News Digital last year.
It's wise to get a head start on verifying the identity of the person you're talking to by requesting a video chat or meeting up in person, he explained, or perhaps googling the person's name and information and doing a reverse image search with their profile pictures to see if the pictures are stolen from another site.
So, with new technology and some vigilance of your own, perhaps the fish you may catch in the sea this Valentine's Day won't be a catfish.
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Fox News' Kurt Knutsson contributed to this report.
