Lookse
June 10, 2019
PERSONAL
Mobile dating app where users upload a like image of their desired partner's face and are matched with other users based on the similarity of the faces. A true superficially based dating app.
Background
At the time, dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble were just coming on the scene. They were making a big splash across the mobile app space. The thought was that we do something similar but go directly at matching people based on desired partner's looks. Plus, we thought it would be fun to try and compare people's faces!
What went well
We used an open source PyTorch facial recognition model that was deployed behind a Flask server. It took quite a bit of effort to get deployed in the cloud but it ended up being surprisingly accurate enough to provide a good experience. All of my friends downloaded the app and we played around with it enjoying seeing whose faces matched with what celebrities.
The downfall
I never expected the app to actually get any real users and that ended up being the case. It was just way too hard to compete against a growing saturated dating app market. We eventually shut it down after a few months due to hosting costs.