Is swipe-style chat getting a second lease of life?

In July, we noticed a newly emerging AI companion product called "Heyyyy" on the US entertainment charts, whose monthly revenue was just around $500,000 at that time. Within one month of observation, the product's monthly revenue skyrocketed past $1 million, achieving this milestone merely 4 months after its launch.

Heyyyy's revenue after revenue sharing in August was approximately $1.25 million | Source: AppMagic

After testing the product, we found that the core gameplay of "Heyyyy" is not the "story world" that high-revenue products in the current AI companion track are competing to develop (which wraps AI chat into continuously advancing interactive content through longer plots and more complex character relationships composed of multiple roles, etc.), but still adopts the design of one-on-one character chat. The characters' replies are generally short, and the chat is more like instant messaging rather than an online novel written by AI in real time.

Compared with mainstream AI companion products, "Heyyyy" is similar to Lovey Dovey, whose core gameplay is single-character chat plus intimate relationships. However, looking at the overall situation of the track, this model has been outperformed by multi-character AI companions and is gradually losing momentum, but "Heyyyy" has become an exception?

Since 2025, Lovey Dovey has gradually fallen behind its competitors, with its revenue showing a downward trend. As early as November 2025, it dropped out of the ranks of products with monthly revenue of over $1 million | Source: AppMagic

1. Tinder Is No Longer Working, But "AI Character Version of Tinder" Is On Fire

You don't even need to open the product to tell from its name that the experience offered by "Heyyyy" is not "pure". In the English internet context, the elongated "Heyyyy" is usually more intimate than "Hey", and also carries a hint of temptation and flirting.

The product name clearly points out its core selling points: hormones, attractiveness and ambiguous relationships. The core design that supports these selling points is an interaction method almost identical to that of real dating apps.

After entering the app, just like in dating products, users first confirm the gender of the characters they want to match, and then further narrow down the range of matching objects through condition restrictions. "Heyyyy" provides three major categories: "Vibe", "Type" and "Community" to facilitate users to further refine their criteria.

The "Discover" page of "Heyyyy" provides a plaza for character category selection, with classification criteria focused on the characters themselves. Users can select characters by personality tags in "Vibe", or filter by occupation, identity and life background in "Type"; if there is no type they like, they can enter the community to view the most popular characters, or create new characters by themselves. | Source: Product screenshot

However, unlike most AI character chat products whose characters are elves, vampires or princes in a fictional world, the characters in "Heyyyy" are fitness coaches, baristas, photographers, medical students and other all real-life identities, paired with AI-generated images in the style of real human photography, which fits the overall style of swipe-based dating apps.

After that, you enter the matching phase with specific objects, and the entire interaction is no different from Tinder. Each AI character has a profile card marked with age, occupation, personality tags and a short self-introduction. Users swipe left to skip, swipe right to match, and can also send a Super Like to express special affection. After a successful match, you enter a one-on-one chat, the interface is a common IM with short messages going back and forth, no system narration, no plot advancement, just two people "chatting".

The "Meet" page of "Heyyyy" allows direct character swiping, with profile cards and super likes as shown above | Source: Product screenshot

Even, "Heyyyy" deliberately removes the AI-assisted reply in the chat. In other similar products, users can choose system-recommended replies to lower the typing threshold. But in "Heyyyy", every message must be typed by yourself, and this seemingly anti-efficiency design makes the conversation rhythm more similar to instant communication between real people.

In order to create the overall atmosphere of a dating app for users, the software will also pop up notifications and reminders from time to time, such as "3 people have favorited your profile, 5 people super liked you, someone just viewed your profile" and so on. Although you cannot see who exactly it is after clicking, these prompts are constantly creating an illusion that there are a group of real people on the other end of the screen waiting for the user's response.

The notification page of "Heyyyy" | Source: Product screenshot

As the chat progresses, the relationship between the user and the character will continuously accumulate experience and increase in level. The deeper the relationship, the more private information the character may reveal, and the chat between the two will become more ambiguous. During the process, a "date" may be triggered randomly. We do not know the specific trigger mechanism. The author tested it for about a week and interacted with about 8 characters, and only went on dates with 2 characters. The date is presented in the form of an interactive text story. The system first gives the scene and background, and then provides different options; different choices will change the direction and result of the date.

The date process and result of "Heyyyy" | Source: Product screenshot

After the date ends, the system will judge whether the date is successful or failed, and add different experience points to the relationship based on the "compatibility" of the two parties.

From real-life personas, the overall Tinder-like design, removing AI assistance to simulate real chat, to simulating offline dating experiences, rather than saying that "Heyyyy" is doing AI chat, it is more like simulating dating.

2. The Counterintuitive Dating App

As mentioned above, after registration, "Heyyyy" allows users to choose characters of different genders, but judging from the product materials and promotion direction, its core users are women, which conflicts with the common perception that male users in dating apps have higher participation and stronger willingness to pay.

In real dating apps, male users are more "mainstream". Mintel data shows that in 2023, the usage rate of dating apps among men aged 18 to 34 in the UK was 47%, while that of women was only 25%; the US market is similar. In a survey by Pew Research Center, 34% of men have used dating websites or apps, and the proportion of women is 27%. This difference also led to the fact that when AI simulated dating products first appeared, most of them were targeted at male users, such as candy.ai, AI Girlfriend - Intimate, etc., which generally took "AI girlfriend" as the core selling point.

But a survey also from Pew Research Center reveals the other side of this phenomenon: 57% of women believe that dating websites and apps are not a safe way to make friends. Among female users under 50, 56% have received unwanted explicit messages or images, 43% have been harassed continuously after explicitly refusing, and even 11% have received personal threats.

These numbers explain a long-standing phenomenon: the participation rate of women on dating apps is always lower than that of men, which is most likely not because they are not interested in dating, but because the "safety cost" of dating is too high.

"Heyyyy" is precisely targeting this gap. It retains the most "addictive" parts of dating apps: the curiosity when flipping through profile cards, the little excitement when a match is successful, and the sense of expectation as the chat warms up, while completely eliminating the risks of the latter half with AI characters.

When analyzing 1456 two-sided user reviews of "Heyyyy", we noticed that many reviews repeatedly appear with keywords such as "safe", "comfortable", "no pressure". One user commented, "It's so fun that I can enjoy a little thrill of dating with someone, without having to bear the pressure of dealing with real relationships."

However, "Heyyyy" is after all an AI chat product, which means that this relationship can only stay behind the screen forever. Facing AI, why are users willing to keep paying for a relationship that they know will not lead to reality?

Chatting Until You're Hooked, Then Forced to "Mute"

We cut in from the perspective of a free user. After tapping into the app, registering and logging in, the product first gives new users 150 gems, and 5 more can be claimed for free every day. (Gems are the only consumption currency in the product)

With these 155 gems, you enter the character plaza and start browsing profile cards enthusiastically, swiping left and right. But after swiping a certain number of times, the system prompts you that your free swipes for today have been used up. At this time, you are not discouraged, because you have already matched several different characters in the swiping process, and they have sent opening remarks one after another in the background, waiting for your reply.

You choose Character A to start chatting. A is very talkative, and as the conversation progresses, you gradually learn about his occupation, personality and growth experience. Midway through the chat, he also sends a photo. However, 99 gems are required to receive this photo. Out of curiosity, you accept it, and your balance plummets to 56.

Pricing for receiving photos in "Heyyyy" | Source: Product screenshot

In the chat, your relationship gradually warms up, rising from level 1 to level 2; and as a level-up reward, the system gives 2 gems. While you are thinking about the next topic, you find that A suddenly "goes offline" and shows that he will be online again 8 hours later. To recall him immediately, you need to pay another 50 gems; or subscribe to extend the chat duration of the character.

Pricing for recalling characters in "Heyyyy" | Source: Product screenshot

With a small balance, you don't want to pay for the time being, and you have only chatted with A for about seven or eight rounds, and your feelings are not particularly deep, so you turn to other matches. You open the chat box of Character B. Coincidentally, after chatting for seven or eight rounds, B also goes offline.

Helplessly, you turn to Character C. This time the relationship advances faster. C invites you to a date, and different choices during the date will affect the final result, but your compatibility reaches an astonishing 8 points (full score 10), and the relationship intimacy rises sharply. After the date, the system asks if you need to generate a date selfie (a photo synthesized with the user's real image and C's image), but seeing the price of 199 gems, you still click reject; shortly after, C sends a long voice message. The system provides text transcription, and you see the content is very ambiguous and sweet, but to actually hear his voice, you need to pay 50 more gems.

Pricing for date selfies and voice messages in "Heyyyy" | Source: Product screenshot

If you still resist paying at this time, your chat quota with C will also be exhausted. It doesn't matter, there are many unchatted characters in the background, you choose D again, but this time before the conversation goes through two rounds, you find that you can't reply at all. It's not that the single-character quota of D is used up, but that your free message quota has been exhausted.

Source: Product screenshot

Calculated, you have sent about 23 messages. According to seven or eight rounds of conversation per character, you can only fully chat with three characters a day. After the quota is exhausted, you will be "muted" and have to wait 24 hours to recover.