OPW – Apr 29 – OculusAI’s Automated Image Rejection service has been gaining popularity amongst dating sites. OculusAI applies machine vision technology to profile image inspection to speed up the approval process. We have interviewed Kevin Carmony, CEO of DatingDNA. After a successful trial run and later, full integration, Kevin highlighted the benefits of AIR in this interview. (Full Disclosure: OculusAI is a client of Courtland Brooks)
Have you seen an increase in the rate of conversions after AIR was integrated into your system?
Yes, no doubt about it. Having every user in the system with a clear headshot has a big impact on the overall quality of the service. We have always tried to be a "serious" dating service, not just a place to kill time, but to actually meet someone compatible. AIR has helped us in that goal significantly, because he service just feels much more "real."
Do you have any user testimonial that might relate to the use of AIR?
Not specifically, but perhaps more importantly, we haven't received ANY complaints from ANY users, which we're happy about, considering the little bit of extra work we push to the user in making sure they comply with uploading an appropriate photo. So, users don't seem to mind at all how uploading their headshot has changed.
Is there a significant change in the time it takes for a user to start using the site after uploading their image?
Because AIR auto crops around the user's head, about 90% of users don't experience ANY difference in joining the site. Of the 10% who get a rejection message back, 90% of those are able to make adjustments on their end easily, by simply choosing a different photo, or using our cropping and rotating tools to try again. This adds very little time to their joining process. As for that last 1%…we have looked carefully and they are those who are trying to game the system by not uploading an appropriate photo. So, we're fine with that group being turned away.
Has the number of visitors to your site increased?
We're always on the upswing, so it's hard to know how much of that is from AIR. We do believe, however, that there's no question AIR has significantly added to the overall quality of our service.
Has there been any feedback about the usability of the site (including ease of access, efficiency etc)?
No, which is a good thing. As I said, I was expecting our support team to hear from some users who didn't like the process, but we haven't heard from any, and thousands of users have been using AIR now.
Has AIR improved your moderation process? If so, how?
Definitely! What we do, is any user who never successfully uploads an image, we have a ticket sent to our support team to review. What we've found is that most of these users shouldn't be on the site anyway; they are underage, spammers, scammers, etc. So, in a way, AIR has proven to be a wonderful filter to round up most of our trouble-making users, and we can remove them from the site very early on. This was a very pleasant benefit to AIR that we hadn't really even considered when we set out to implement it. The bottom line is we see a very big upside to using AIR, with essentially no downside. The cost is very reasonable, and the folks at AIR have been great to work with. We are very happy that we have added AIR to our dating service.
