Snapchat is making its ChatGPT-powered My AI service available to all users, not to mention the AI still has a lot of room for improvement.
The ChatGPT-powered Snapchat artificial intelligence personality is now available to all app users. An enhanced version of My AI, the built-in chatbot that was previously limited to Snapchat+ subscribers, is now rolling out globally, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel announced during the Company Partner Summit event.
Snapchat makes its ChatGPT-powered My AI service available to all users
With this extension, My AI gains several new Snapchat-specific features. The chatbot can recommend restaurants and other activities to users based on what’s popular on the Snap Map, and it can offer augmented reality lenses. Users can also add AI to group chats and set their own name and avatar for that AI character. My AI can also react to photos or videos. At present, AI can only reply with text messages, but Snap says it will be able to reply to snaps with its own AI-generated content “soon”and the feature will only be available to Snapchat+ subscribers.
While My AI’s deployment has been limited so far, the company explains that My AI is already very popular with users who average at least 2 million messages per day with the chatbot. However, Snap’s implementation of OpenAI technology has been fairly criticized. The Washington Post, for example, reported that the bot sometimes engaged in inappropriate conversations and could give questionable advice to researchers who posed as teenagers.
Not to mention that the AI can still be greatly improved.
Today, Snap explains that My AI uses “additional moderation technology”so users may be temporarily disabled if they “use the service inappropriately.”The company also explains that the AI has been trained to take into account the age of the user with whom it communicates, so that discussions do not touch on topics intended, so to speak, for older people. In addition, parents can also use the Family Center app’s parental controls feature to track how much time their teens spend talking with their new AI friend.
And we’ll end by adding that Snap is fully aware of My AI’s current limitations, which it has already described as “prone to hallucinations.”Evan Spiegel, who suggested that interacting with AIs like ChatGPT could soon become a daily habit, was also quite circumspect about this: “My AI probably makes a lot of mistakes, so you can’t take everything it says as the truth, but it’s funny, that’s for sure.