Need a dating wingman? St. Pete man develops app to help break the ice

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - A man in St. Pete just launched an app that uses Artificial Intelligence as users' wingman on dating apps.

"I came up with the idea late last year, and I thought this would be a really powerful tool for some for people that are using dating apps because the dating market's very competitive," Tyler Henkel, the founder of the app WingAI, said.

"I could tell that a lot of guys don't know what they're doing on online dating. They usually send very generic messages like, 'Hey. What's up? How's it going,' and stuff like that, and so I was thinking, if there was a tool that used AI that could help guys get on to a better foot, it could help their experience a lot," Henkel said.

Henkel started creating the app in December.

Tyler Henkel developed a dating app to help break the ice. 

"We decided to mainly focus on guys because those are the ones that are usually like the ones sending the first message, but it works great for women as well," he said.

Users take a picture of their match's profile or profile picture and then upload that to WingAI. The app then generates a question to ask the match.

READ: St. Pete City Theater hosting summer camp for aspiring actors

"I think everyone who has gone on a dating app has had that experience where, you know, they met with somebody, and they don't, you know, maybe the person doesn't have much on their profile. They're not really sure what to say," he said.

"I think with this kind of app, we can help give advice that's going to really make the difference and get people into relationships, ideally," Henkel said.

Henkel, a software engineer, said they've tested the app over the past few months.

READ: Scammers using Uber, Lyft drivers as technology advances: St. Pete police

"We tried the generic lines, kind of like, 'Hey, what's up? How's it going,'" he said. "Those are the things that guys normally send, and then we tried the line straight from the app, and the generic lines only had a 40 percent response rate, and the ones generated from the app had about an 80 to 85 percent response rate," Henkel said.

Henkel has been working with a business partner to develop and market the app. They officially launched it a couple of weeks ago.

"It's really kind of giving you inspiration for what to say. Sometimes, you might want to try different ideas and stuff like that, and so this helps you brainstorm," he said.

The app is now available in the Apple app store and online at wing.app for Android and desktop users.

 Henkel said they hope to have it in the Google Play app store soon.