Dating apps have spent years refining the swipe, but Auntee is betting that UAE singles are ready to abandon it altogether. The UK-based matchmaking app has launched in the UAE with an AI-driven approach that replaces profile browsing with a 15-minute voice conversation designed to understand what users actually want from a relationship.
Rather than asking people to write a bio and start scrolling through potential matches, Auntee begins with a voice interview conducted by its AI matchmaking persona. The conversation explores areas including lifestyle, ambitions, communication preferences and plans for the future, with the system then generating a profile on the user’s behalf.
Auntee says its matching process considers 14 behavioural dimensions grouped across four broader categories: Vision & Money, Lifestyle & Rhythm, Foundations, and Spark & Dynamics. Instead of providing an endless stream of profiles, the platform uses that information to make a smaller number of curated introductions.
It’s an interesting response to a dating-app industry increasingly dealing with complaints about swipe fatigue and superficial interactions. Auntee’s approach also borrows from a matchmaking tradition familiar across many communities in the UAE: introductions made by someone who understands both people rather than two strangers discovering each other through photographs and a handful of prompts.
The technology wasn’t originally intended for dating. Founder Zain Shaikh developed an earlier voice-based recruitment project called Seat At The Table, which interviewed employers and candidates before calculating compatibility. According to Shaikh, repeated suggestions that the same concept could work for dating eventually led to Auntee.
The company claims the app attracted 3,000 users during its first eight weeks following its July 2026 launch and has made more than 500 introductions. Those figures are still small compared with established dating platforms, and the more important question will be whether its AI-generated compatibility translates into lasting connections.
The initial voice interview and AI-created profile are free. Users who want Auntee to actively search for matches enter what the company calls a 90-day “season”, normally priced at AED 699. A launch promotion currently reduces that price to AED 245.
Auntee is now available in both the UAE and UK. Its proposition is less about reinventing matchmaking than using AI to revive an older idea: learning something meaningful about two people before deciding they should meet. Whether an algorithm can play the role traditionally occupied by a well-connected human aunty may be the more interesting test.
