Snapchat Expands ChatGPT-Powered ‘My AI' To All Users, Not Without Huge Backlash

The AI subject was rather quiet, boring, and a lot less interesting to most people who don't work in the field.

But when OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, the product that quickly captivated the tech world, made other tech companies to scramble and seek their own solutions.

Thanks to generative AIs' ability to do a wide range of tasks, including writing poetry, technical papers, novels, and essays, the large language model, AI-powered chatbots have since become a viral sensation on the web and beyond.

Snap's Snapchat is among those that wish to benefit from this AI hype, and to pursue that, it partners with OpenAI to use the generative AI to power what it calls the 'My AI' chatbot.

While many people have praised Snapchat for doing this, saying that My AI is the easiest way for even the least tech savvy people to know this kind of technology, many parents don't really this idea at all.

It all began when Snapchat introduced My AI, to give a whole new meaning to the "chat" part of its name.

Not long after that, Snap, the company behind Snapchat, announced that its customizable My AI chatbot is accessible to all users within the app.

The feature, which is powered by the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT, was previously only available to paying Snapchat+ subscribers.

With the AI, users can receive recommendations, answers questions, and more.

It can even help users make plans and help with other things.

Users can even use it to reply to others' messages, just like a friend.

According to Snap, the AI can be brought into conversation with friends when it’s mentioned with "@MyAI."

Users can also give it a name and design a custom Bitmoji avatar for it to personalize it more.

The move comes after ChatGPT creator OpenAI opened up access to its chatbot to third-party businesses, and Snap was among the early partners that experiment with adding ChatGPT to their respective platforms.

While the AI is indeed useful, and for Snapchat, can increase engagements, many started criticizing this invasive AI.

Parents in particular, are expressing their worries about how this AI can affect the app's influence over their children.

First of, the tool, which is trained on vast troves of data online, can spread inaccurate information and has the potential to respond to users in ways they might find inappropriate.

Then, My AI uses the data that Snapchat collects about each user to make its interactions feel more like a conversation with a friend. For some people, this is a violation of privacy. In particular, parents are worry that the app is accessing their children's locations.

While all social media apps in general collect users' locations when they're given permission to do so, but My AI personifies that data collection, making its knowledge of users eerily obvious.

Then, My AI also received backlash when it was found providing inappropriate and unsafe responses after being told it was talking to young teenagers.

In a blog post, Snap acknowledged that "My AI is far from perfect but we’ve made a lot of progress," saying that it made changes to "help protect against responses that could be inappropriate or harmful."

Snap also said that the company has added moderation technology and included the new feature to its in-app parental tools.

“We will continue to use these early learnings to make AI a more safe, fun, and useful experience, and we’re eager to hear your thoughts,” the company said.

Snapchat also announced that My AI only gave "non conforming" responses to 0.01% of users. It also shared that My AI will be aware of a users' age going forward and it "worked vigorously to improve its responses to inappropriate Snapchatter requests, regardless of a Snapchatter’s age."

But that doesn't stop the backlash.

Users are also complaining that the feature is getting in the way of them chatting with their actual friends.

Particularly, this is because users who don't subscribe to Snapchat+, cannot remove My AI from the top of their feed.

As a result of this, the Snapchat app received a huge influx of 1-star reviews following the broader My AI's launch.

This indicates that a portion of Snapchat's user base is pretty unhappy with the chatbot's existence.

But for the rest of the users, many of them have embraced My AI, calling it their bestie or homie, and using it to complete homework assignments.

Some users also chat with the chatbot to kill time, when they're bored, and when they want to talk to someone but don't have anyone to talk to.