Creating the “Perfect” Dating Profile Pics (Part 1)

Update: Part II is now published here.

A few months ago when I couldn’t fall asleep, an idea struck me.

As the founder of a top 20 dating app in the US and second-time owner of said app, I often get random ideas that swirl together new tech trends with dating.

This one was half humor and half practical, and seemed like a fun side project that I could tackle without drawing team resources.

You know how the profiles you see on dating apps tend to repeat many of the same cliche photos & bios?

For men’s profiles, you can count on spotting some guys with their shirts off showing off their abs, the aww-inspiring dog pics, gents all business-like & suited up, they all like to hike or travel, and maybe even a shot with their mom or grandma to humanize them.

What if we could generate super handsome versions of the most successful of these photo themes for you?

What if we lean into the cliche and obvious purpose of these photos (what woman can resist a guy with a cute dog?) to an absurd amount, allowing you to humorously wink at these cliches while attracting attention?

With generative AI, this now seemed possible, so I started tinkering.

First, using Stable Diffusion’s in-painting feature, I figured out how to make a “mask” of the section where it should fill in, then started changing my face to see what I’d look like at age 60:

Then, I tried on a few new hair styles:

It turns out, I don’t look very good with a shaved head.

But fun experiments aside, I was getting stuck on generating photorealistic images with the cliche themes, especially dogs. The in-painting technique was giving inconsistent results not staying inside the masked area, and the dogs looked really freaky, so I thought I was stuck…

To be continued in part 2.