Woman scrolls Tinder—and finds a man using her photo as his profile picture. It gets worse: ‘That’s so creepy’

A woman scrolling through Tinder was caught off guard when she recognized something eerily familiar in a man's profile photo: Her own dining room. And her dogs. And the birthday party she'd thrown for one of them.

Grace (@glutenfreevapejuice) explains how she stumbled across a dating profile, which features what she suspects is an AI version of a photograph taken inside her house.

“I was just scrolling Tinder, and I came across this profile, and I'm like, that's—that's my photo,” Grace says, while sitting in bed.

“Okay, here's my original photo,” she says, overlaying a photograph of herself smiling widely while sitting at a table holding her dog Bob, who is wearing a paper crown and eating from a bowl. “My photo is taken at my dog's birthday party in my dining room.”

“Now this is the photo I came across,” she says, showing the Tinder photo she found. In it, a curly-haired man in a gray sweatshirt replaces Grace. A white husky wearing a paper crown that says “Tom Ford” replaces her dog Bob.

The rest of the scene is uncomfortably similar. It features the same framed butterfly artwork in the background, the same green glass on the left, the same white-marble table. Even the same bowl of the same dog food.

“This man has taken it from my Instagram, found me on Instagram, screenshotted my photo, ran it through AI, and is now using this as his, uh, Tinder profile picture,” Grace explains. “Let's do … a quick side by side,” she says, before displaying both images on her video next to one another. “What the [expletive] is going on?”

“LIKE SIR WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT??” she asks in the caption of her video. She soon gets her answer.

The story gets weirder…

Grace posted an update two days later. In it, she responds to a comment reading, “I gotta know you messaged him … I need the [follow-up].”

“Update on the man who stole my Instagram photo and then created a Tinder profile with [an] AI version of my photo,” the creator says, once again displaying both her original picture and the man's AI version of it.

“So I match with him,” she explains. “Not because I'm interested. I think this man is insane, right?” Grace explains she wanted to know why the man did what he did.

“I just wanted to be like. ‘So, hey, quick question. What's wrong with you?'” She adds a screenshot of their conversation. In it, she writes, “That's so weird how we had identical birthday parties for our dogs. What a coincidence.”

Surprisingly, the man admitted to taking her photo. He replied: “Well, I saw your profile, and I made that hoping it would get you to match with me. Gotta play games with these apps to get them to work.” Technically, his strategy worked.

‘Report and block'

What's scary is that had she not stumbled across the profile herself, she might have never known.

Viewers had some suggestions for next moves, with one writing, “I think a reasonable response would be ‘hey that's incredibly creepy, never do that again' then report and block.” Many suggested reporting and blocking the account. Others floated the idea of the profile being a bot.

Another suggested, “I fear this may be a new psychotic way for men to attempt a ‘meet cute' in hopes of getting your attention, getting you to swipe and talk to them while they try to make it cute…”

What do I do if someone steals my photos for Tinder?

Individuals can report accounts that use their photos to Tinder through the app.

The company has a dedicated reporting process for impersonation. If you believe you are being impersonated, Tinder recommends submitting a report through its contact form.

It also suggests including screenshots of the profile and any identifying information, specifically the profile's name, age, biography, and location.

Whether Grace's experience would qualify for “impersonation” is ambiguous, since the man in the photo is a different person. Still, she is able to report the misleading profile for review.

Like several other dating apps, Tinder has implemented a photo verification feature designed to help users figure out whether the people they're talking to look like their profile pictures.

The process involves submitting a video selfie. Tinder then uses “facial scanning technology to check that the video was taken by a real, live person, and that it wasn't digitally altered or manipulated.” It also reportedly helps detect whether multiple accounts are using the same person's photos.

@glutenfreevapejuice

Subplot News reached out to Grace via TikTok direct message.

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