A dating app that claimed it could use artificial intelligence to screen potential mates for “sexual health” problems (i.e., STDs) has been shut down after the Federal Trade Commission caught wind of the company’s dubious claims.
A company called HeHealth previously promoted what it called an “AI-powered sexually transmitted infection (‘STI’) detection application,” the likes of which hilariously asked male users to send in dick pics so that they could be screened for social diseases. The app, dubbed Calmara, would then use the magic of AI to assess whether the male member was healthy. HeHealth claimed that Calmara could detect as many as 10 different sexually transmitted diseases with up to 94% accuracy and, on its website, the company described its application as a “1 min AI-Powered Penis Health Checker”:
As you can imagine, there were problems with Calmara. For one thing, most STDs are invisible to the naked eye. For another thing, the app doesn’t appear to have worked very well. Indeed, a previous investigation by the Los Angeles Times found that the app “struggled to distinguish between inanimate objects and human genitals, issuing a cheery ‘Clear!’ to images of both a novelty penis-shaped vase and a penis-shaped cake.” Yeah, that’s not great.
After the FTC noticed HeHealth’s less-than-optimal test results, it opened an investigation into the company. In a letter sent to HeHealth and subsequently made public, the agency notes that the government “requires companies to have competent and reliable scientific evidence when making health-related claims,” and that “substantiation for HeHealth’s” claims about its own services appeared to be “problematic for several reasons.” Among other things, the agency found that HeHealth had tested the performance of its AI algorithm using “a relatively small number of images” and that, while the company had claimed to be able to test for 10 STIs, a study associated with the algorithm claimed it could only identify four diseases.
The FTC subsequently forced HeHealth to shut down Calmara and delete all customer data that had been obtained through it. The app’s troubles were first spotted by The Verge. Following the shuttering of the app, the FTC said it would not continue with its investigation into the company. Gizmodo reached out to HeHealth for comment and will update this story if it responds.
It’s probably just as well that Calmara is dead. Speaking as someone who has written about cybersecurity for over five years now, it seems somewhat unwise for a company to be a walking dick pic database. That’s a data breach (and, later, a class action lawsuit) just waiting to happen.
+ There are no comments
Add yours