Say Hi or Bye to My AI

Snapchat introduced their new AI tool this week: ‘My AI’. Right on the first day, it got a lot of complaints and Snapchat immediately stood up to modify the chatbot. What is this new tool and why did it go wrong right away?

Now that the social media landscape cannot be imagined without ChatGPT anymore, Snapchat naturally couldn’t stay left behind with their own AI tool, built with the latest ChatGPT: My AI. The tool was already introduced for Snapchat+ users at the end of February, but since this week it is also available for all other users, and it did not go without a hitch.

Flirtatious behaviour

Already on the first day of the chatbot’s introduction, Snapchat received a lot of complaints. Most Snapchat users wanted nothing to do with it: the first hit on Google was “Delete Snapchat My AI”. And among those who do use the new tool, things don’t always go well either. The chatbot pretended to be a “real” person and even suggested going on dates with children. Experts and parents were triggered immediately and after strong criticism, Snapchat immediately intervened. The bot now no longer behaves like a real person, but not all of its faults seem to have been removed yet. My AI does still show flirty behaviour, for example.

Machine learning

How did a chatbot go so wrong? The My AI chatbot is created through machine learning, which means it learns to understand you as a user better as you provide more information. Based on this information, the chatbot uses code to ‘learn’ the best response to your questions and messages. The more information you give, the more it resembles a conversation with a real human being, so it could get so out of hand. Then there is also the dilemma about the invasion of privacy. Snapchat can read along with everything users, including children and young adults, share with the app. These kinds of technological developments are happening so fast that adequate laws and regulations are not yet in place. Until these are in place, we continue to find this chatbot a bit tricky. For now, do we say ‘bye’ to ‘My AI’?