Feature layout of the Spēk Romance release, set as a magazine spread. Same copy, same quote.
Dating · Translation · Voice cloning
The dating app where nobody speaks your language
Spēk already lets strangers talk across a language in their own cloned voices. Its new Romance layer bets that the same trick can carry a first date, and it labels its AI companions out loud.
Every dating app on earth can show you someone in another country. Not one of them lets you talk to them. That is the gap ArtemisWorx, a small Boston-area studio, says it has closed with Spēk Romance, an opt-in dating layer launched on October 19 inside Spēk, its live translator.
Spēk’s party trick is already unusual. Record a minute of yourself reading, and from then on, when you hold a button and talk, the other person hears your words in their language, in a cloned copy of your voice. The company built it so the founder could talk to his Brazilian in-laws at the dinner table. Romance takes the same machinery and points it at strangers who might fall for each other.
Ten seconds, in your own voice
The new layer lives under Friends, and nothing about it shows until a person turns it on and confirms a year of birth; it is adults only. A short profile covers what a voice cannot, what you are looking for, who you would like to meet, where you are, and then you record one ten-second line. That line is your introduction. Tap any heart on the Romance map and you hear that person’s line in your own language, in their voice. A woman in Rio recorded hers in Portuguese; a listener in Boston hears English, and it still sounds like her.
Send a romantic invite and, if the other person says yes, both hearts turn red and a private room opens. The room is Spēk’s two-phone mode: hold, talk, let go, each hearing the other in their own language. Ten ready-made flirt lines are translated as they are sent, and a set of hand-drawn gifts goes for free.
Prove you are real, live
The part that will interest anyone who has watched dating apps fill with fakes is the gate. Before a heart can appear on the map, the person reads three random words aloud, live. The words change every time, so a recording prepared in advance cannot pass, and the clip is checked and then discarded. Hearts that pass wear a “Voice verified” mark.
The company is equally direct about its own bots. Seven practice partners from the Spēk team, in Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese and English, sit on the map from day one so that a newcomer always has someone to talk to while the map fills. Each carries a visible AI tag on its heart, in its profile and inside the room, and the tag survives a match. “We built Spēk so my Brazilian in-laws could hear me in my own voice,” Hagopian says, “and then we realised the same thing is true of two strangers who might fall for each other.”
Nobody is told
A Romance profile is kept apart from a person’s friends. It can be hidden from them, paused, or dropped at any time, and no one is notified. Age shows as a decade, never a number. Asking for money, impersonation, unwanted sexual content or a user who seems to be under 18 can be reported from a single menu, and the company says those reports are read first, within 24 hours. The community rules, Romance rules included, are public on its site.
Screens The hearts, each with a ten-second line you hear in your language; a match with the team’s labelled AI companion; and the rose-tinted room where the first conversation happens.
In brief
- What
- Spēk Romance, an opt-in dating layer inside the Spēk translator
- Who
- ArtemisWorx LLC, Boston area; adults only
- Where
- Android on Google Play and the web today; iPhone with the next App Store update
- Cost
- Free during launch. Spēk Plus, US$9.99 a month or US$59.99 a year, is unchanged
- Languages
- 22, including Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Arabic and Armenian
- Opt in under Friends and confirm your year of birth.
- Read three random words aloud, live. Verified hearts get the mark.
- Record ten seconds in your own voice. Everyone hears it in theirs.
- Say yes and both hearts turn red. The room is the first date.
