Noyb files complaint against Bumble for AI Icebreakers feature

The Austrian privacy advocacy group Noyb has filed a complaint with the Austrian data protection authority (DPA) against Bumble for not having a legal basis to process personal information for its AI Icebreakers feature.

In December 2023, Bumble introduced the AI Icebreakers feature to the ‘Bumble for Friends’ section of the app. This feature is powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and grants access to people’s personal profile data to start a conversation with a user, thanks to an AI-generated message.

However, the AI Icebreakers were introduced without ever asking people for their consent. Instead, Bumble users got a prompt saying that AI would help them get a conversation going. Because of the prompt’s design, users are encouraged to say ‘Okay’, giving OpenAI access to their personal information on their profile.

Closing the prompt doesn’t do anything: every time a user opens the dating app, the prompt reappears. It only goes away if you click ‘Okay’. “While this suggests that Bumble relies on (annoying forms of) consent, Bumble seems to merely pretend to ask for consent, which gives people a false sense of control,” Noyb argues.

The privacy advocacy group claims that Bumble lacks a legal basis as it cannot claim ‘legitimate interest’ as a legal basis and has never sought consent. In addition, the dating app violated its transparency obligations under Article 5(1)(a) GDPR by failing to provide information about the processing in relation to the Icebreaker feature and by confusing users with a ‘fake’ consent banner.

Lastly, sensitive information like sexual orientation was collected and processed, which is only allowed with explicit consent.

Therefore, Noyb has filed a complaint with the Austrian DPA, the Datenschutzbehörde (DSB), requesting Bumble to stop unlawfully processing personal information and to start using a proper legal basis for its AI Icebreaker feature. The privacy group also suggested to impose an administrative fine to prevent recurrence in the future.

“Bumble forces its AI features on millions of European users without ever asking them for their consent. Instead, their personal data is being sent to OpenAI and fed into the company’s AI systems. Bumble’s claim to have a legitimate interest in sending user data to OpenAI is absurd. The dating app seems to be so desperate to get in on the AI hype that it is trampling on users' fundamental rights in the process,” Lisa Steinfeld, data protection lawyer at Noyb, commented on the matter in a statement.