Try flirting on Patook, the new Tinder for friends, and get promptly banned The Beatles got by with a little help from theirs, Freddie Mercury wrote a loving tribute to his favourite and […]

The Beatles got by with a little help from theirs, Freddie Mercury wrote a loving tribute to his favourite and Andrew Gold wanted to thank you for being one. Friends, in all shapes and sizes, are the family we choose and the gift we give ourselves, but making new ones as adults in a busy modern world can prove to be tricky.

This is the logic behind Patook, a new app touted as the ‘Tinder for friends’, matching people based on their interests with strictly no chances of any funny business. While there are plenty of other apps centered around kindling new friendships available, Patook is the first to deploy a sophisticated form of artificial intelligence (AI), explains founder and chief executive Tony Daher.

Having lived in Seattle for most of his life, Daher found his own experiences of struggling to make new friends outside of school or work mirrored that of his friends. While using the internet to seek out a partner has gone from a shadowy and stigmatised activity to a universally-accepted, mainstream approach to finding love, the same can’t be said for friendship.

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“There are people in dating apps like Tinder and OKCupid who are there just to make friends, but their intention is not always clear,” he explains. “I checked the App Store and there were some apps which were supposedly about making friends, but I joined them it’s a bunch of topless guys and women in underwear. [Making friends] is really not what they’re doing.”

A good friend these days is hard to find

Left demotivated by the confusing nature of friendships on dating apps and dating on the friendship apps, the 33-year old decided to clarify the guidelines in a new app, which is chaste to the point of brutality. “In Patook, it’s extremely strict. If anybody does anything that’s a little bit romantic, we immediately ban them so they never come back.”

Once a new user signs up, they’re asked a series of questions as to what they’re looking for in a friend. A desirable trait is then assigned a points value: for example, you could choose to award someone who likes reading 100 points, playing the violin 50 and 20 for speaking French fluently. The criteria is calculated, and potential friend matches are presented in the familiar swipe-left-for-no, right-for-yes format Tinder has popularised, or as a scrolling list. When two people (or couple) indicate they’d like to be friends with each other, they’re given the opportunity to start messaging.

Using artificial intelligence to filter out the flirts

Patook’s AI has two purposes: the first of which is filter out any romantically-inclined messages through natural language processing. This is to create a safe atmosphere for users, particularly, Daher says, for women, and to reassure them it’s highly unlikely they’ll receive anything inappropriate or a pick up line. “If somebody says, for example, ‘You’re super hot,” the AI immediately compares it against a database of flirty messages. If it categorises it as a very flirty, it won’t let it go through, and you’ll receive a warning. After a certain amount of warnings, you’re out.”

The algorithm will be taught to be more lenient when examining messages sent between straight women (“Because they tend to say stuff like ‘You look super hot,’ and it’s not really flirty”), but is particularly vigilant for men sending messages of that nature to women. What about straight man to straight man, I ask. “I don’t think a guy would tell another guy he’s super hot,” Daher reasons.

Alongside text analysis, the AI has also been trained to spot user behaviour which may give away their non-platonic motives. A married man only looking at the profiles of much younger women may raise suspicion, and trying to chat to profiles with photos but very little supplied information could suggest the user is selecting ‘friends’ based on looks alone. Pictures are also analysed and flagged to human moderators if the AI is unsure if it’s appropriate.

While it is possible to become reinstated once your account has been banned, it’s rare, Daher concedes. Patook racked up 70,000 users in its beta stage, with users exchanging 15,000 messages a day, and he hopes its puritanical approach to companionship will attract many more. And has anyone met as friends, but ended striking up a romantic relationship? “It might have happened, I don’t know of one,” he muses. “It’s not like they’d come and tell me if they did.”

Patook is available to download on iOS and Android for free