Culture

Dating App Announces New Celebrity Lookalike Search Function

Badoo has announced a controversial new feature.

Getty Images / Pascal Le Segretain

Fans of the r/dopplebangher subreddit, where people post nudes of women who look a lot like attractive celebrities, are about to have an official dating app. The developers at Badoo have announced that their app will soon allow users to find new matches based on the celebrities each person looks most like. That means if you’re obsessed with Emma Watson, you might be able to find women in your area who have her pixie-esque face shape.

The app will make connections between regular users and celebrities by enacting facial recognition technology — similar to the algorithm that notices your friends’ faces in Facebook photos and suggests you tag them. Though Badoo will suggest popular celebrities for searches, it will also allow users to upload new photos of celebrities and ask the system to find matches.

These women, according to Badoo, like a lot like Kendall Jenner.

BBC

Of course, by that logic, people will now be able to upload a photo of anyone on earth, including their own exes and ask Badoo to find them lookalikes. As a Badoo user, you won’t have any idea how your date found you — you could very well look like the guy who broke her heart just weeks ago. It’s probably worth mentioning that the subreddit devoted to this kind of thing is really only half celebrities and half requests for “my ex” or “this girl I once worked with.”

Badoo, a London-based app used primarily outside the United States, was first released in 2006, and is currently the most widely used dating app in the world. Though it still hasn’t overtaken Tinder in the U.S., it’s the biggest dating app in South America, Europe, and Mexico and Central America.

See also: The Best Dating Apps in 2017, Aside from Tinder