Valley-created app 'Vinylly' has become one of the first dating apps to use artificial intelligence to help people find a match based on their taste in music.
As a lifelong music fan, CEO and founder Rachel Van Nortwick founded Vinylly back in 2016.
"Some of the greatest relationships, friendships, romantic relationships I've had in my life have definitely had music as a component," Van Nortwick said.
The app takes users' tastes in music to match them with compatible love interests.
Seven years later, it's on both the App Store and Google Play with a new AI feature.
"AI is the hottest, you know, buzzword around tech today," Van Nortwick said. "For us, we really wanted to think about using AI purposefully in the app."
She and her team found AI's purpose for them in Vinylly's new cocktail lounge feature.
"We kind of made the comparison of our dating app being, like, you know, a bar," Van Nortwick said. "The cocktail lounge allows our users to pair two different genres, so they can pick any two from their profile or match's profile and it generates a [cocktail] recipe with instructions."
With the rise in AI comes the rise in skepticism among some users though too.
Arizona State University School of Computing and AI Professor Subbarao Kambhampati told ABC15 that at some point, some experts believe AI could probably know more about us than we even do ourselves.
"All of this is actually information that is being captured and it depends on the goodwill of the operations to not misuse it at this point of time," Kambhampati said.
Van Nortwick said, though, her company uses the information gathered in the best interests of the app's users.
"There are, as with anything, responsible ways to go about things and maybe irresponsible or unethical ways to go about things," she said. "I think in terms of Vinylly and how I'm looking at it, it's an enhancement."
