It’s a constant struggle to find just one person on dating apps that you can connect with for more than a few dates. Unfortunately, too much of the experience is focused on physical appearance rather than learning more about the other person – a dynamic that’s hard to overcome on an app. Bumble’s latest attempt to do this is by allowing users to find matches based on their interests.
Users can access the new tool by clicking “Narrow your search” and then “Advanced filters.” They can then choose “Filter by your interests.” Each user can include up to five interests on their profile, so there’s a risk of someone not choosing a mutual interest, even if they like it – and Bumble just added more than 30 new options. But, at the same time, people can’t click on them all in the hopes of connecting, rather than actually being interested in the same thing. Plus, there’s the option to see other people when the potential options run out.
Generally, most of the topics are pretty light, like memes, tacos, and travel. There are a few interests that have a slightly deeper impact on the other person, like mindfulness, slow living, and therapy. Either way, they’re not getting a chance to fully peer into the other person’s soul, but at least it’s more than just a pretty face?
Bumble is also expanding its Opening Moves feature, which launched in April this year, and allows people to set a specific question to be answered by each of their matches, instead of thinking of a new first message each time. Now, people can add up to three opening moves for matches to answer and they can be images with captions.
While the use of generative AI in games seems almost inevitable, as the medium has always toyed with new ways to make enemies and NPCs smarter and more realistic, watching several NVIDIA ACE demos back to back really gave me a stomachache.
This wasn’t just a slightly smarter enemy AI – ACE can create entire conversations out of thin air, simulate voices and try to give NPCs a sense of personality. It’s also working locally on your PC, powered by NVIDIA’s RTX GPUs. But while all of this might sound good on paper, I hated nearly every second I saw the AI NPCs in action.
TiGames’ ZooPunk is a prime example of this: it relies on NVIDIA ACE to generate dialogue, a virtual voice and lip syncing for an NPC named Buck. But as you can see in the video above, Buck sounds like a weird robot with a slightly rustic accent. If he’s supposed to have some kind of relationship with the main character, you can’t tell from the performance.
I think my inner hatred for NVIDIA’s ACE-powered AI boils down to this: there’s simply nothing charming about it. No joy, no warmth, no humanity. Every ACE AI character feels like a developer cutting corners in the worst way possible, as if you can see their contempt for the audience as a boring NPC. I would much rather scroll past some text on the screen, at least I don’t have to interact with weird robot voices.