Tinder pauses AI Photo Enhance tool after complaints

Tinder has paused an AI-powered Photo Enhance tool that some users said altered their appearance, NewsNation reported.

Former user Jenny Rubin told NewsNation that the tool edited her photo without her opting in. “It was extremely violating,” she told NewsNation’s Jesse Weber. “It felt pretty uncanny, to be honest. Those are not my teeth. That’s not what my mouth looks like.” Tinder had apparently changed the photo of her from a toothless smile to one with teeth.

Rubin deleted the app and made a TikTok about it, and others told her the app did the same thing. Tinder users also told NBC News that the app changed facial features and even skin tone, and also added features that weren’t previously there.

“Photo Enhance is a tool that helps improve the technical quality of your photos. It’s designed to enhance overall photo quality — for example, making your profile photo clearer and better lit — not to make you look different,” Tinder’s page on Photo Enhance states. The feature is supposed to “sharpen blurry images, adjust brightness and exposure, and improve clarity,” the page reads. “It’s not designed to add or remove people, objects, or backgrounds, apply cosmetic effects, or change facial features or skin tone appearance.”

A Tinder spokesperson reiterated that the feature isn’t designed to change someone’s appearance. “We know that profiles with clear, well-lit first photos have a much better experience, so our goal was to help make that easier for people on Tinder. The feature is in a test phase in limited markets and is available to a subset of profiles that had a detectable technical issue on the first photo, and more than 90 percent of people who receive an enhanced photo keep it,” the spokesperson told Mashable over email.

According to the page, the suggested enhancement can be disabled, and the photo can be reverted to its original.

Tinder introduced the feature in March, along with a ton of other AI-powered features, including a matchmaker called Chemistry. At the same time, Tinder launched Photo Insights, which uses AI to scan users’ camera rolls to determine interests based on patterns. The app previously introduced Photo Selector, an AI tool to help pick the best photos for a user’s profile, in 2024.

Photo Enhanced is now paused in the 13 U.S. states where it was available. Tinder told NBC News and Mashable that the unintended changes impacted a small number of users. “Feedback data shows less than 0.5 percent of enhanced photos were flagged as not looking like the user, though not all of that feedback reflects a change as visible as what’s been reported,” the spokesperson told Mashable. It’s paused to investigate the causes and strengthen safeguards.