Bumble Plans to Ditch Swiping as It Prepares AI-Heavy Redesign

Bumble is preparing to retire the swipe, the gesture that defined a generation of dating apps, as part of a major overhaul coming later this year.

In an interview with Axios, CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said the company will “be saying goodbye to the swipe and hello to something that I believe is revolutionary for the category.” The change would mark one of the biggest product shifts in Bumble’s history and a symbolic break from the 2010s dating app playbook.

The decision comes after a run of weak quarters for Bumble’s core app. The company has been losing paying customers, and the CEO framed the upcoming redesign as a response to a “period of real transformation” at the company.

On Bumble’s latest quarterly earnings call, Wolfe Herd said the company has “executed a deliberate reset of our member base.” According to her, Bumble “made a clear choice to prioritize quality over quantity, focusing on well-intentioned, engaged members,” a move she acknowledged reduced overall scale but which she argued “meaningfully improved the health of our ecosystem.”

That reset has come with a visible cost in paying users. In the first quarter of this year, Bumble’s paid user count fell about 21% to 3.2 million, down from 4 million in the same period a year earlier. A full redesign of the app is a strong signal to investors that the company sees the current model as unsustainable.

While Bumble has not yet detailed what will replace the swipe, Wolfe Herd’s past comments suggest AI will play a central role in the next version of the product.

The company is developing an AI dating assistant called Bee, and Wolfe Herd has repeatedly described AI as “a supercharger to love and relationships.” Like other dating platforms, Bumble already uses AI to decide which profiles to show to whom, but its leadership has signalled ambitions that go further than behind-the-scenes matching.

Wolfe Herd has floated more radical ideas, including personal AI bots that could date other AI bots on a user’s behalf. Those kinds of scenarios, often compared to “Black Mirror”-style futures, raise questions about how far users particularly Gen Z are willing to go with visible, proactive AI in their dating lives.

That tension is becoming more important as younger users grow more sceptical of obvious AI features, even as they continue to rely on algorithmic feeds and recommendations in other apps. Bumble’s challenge will be to introduce new AI-powered experiences without alienating people who are already experiencing dating app fatigue.

For now, the company is not turning off swiping immediately. Bumble’s large-scale overhaul is not expected to roll out until the last quarter of this year, which means the familiar left-right gesture will remain in place for several more months.