Snapchat launches its own AI chatbot powered by ChatGPT technology
The most recent version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT is used by the chatbot that Snapchat is launching. Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snap, claims that it’s a gamble that more people will start using AI chatbots in their daily lives.
The “My AI” Snapchat bot will be placed in the chat tab of the app above friend discussions. The bot will first only be accessible to $3.99 a month Snapchat Plus customers, but eventually, it will be made available to all 750 million monthly active Snapchat users. The central concept is that we would converse with AI daily in addition to speaking with our friends and family, he claims. We are also in an excellent position to handle this as a messaging service.
My AI is currently only a quick ChatGPT inside of Snapchat that is mobile-friendly. The primary distinction is that Snap’s version has fewer questions to answer. Employees at Snap have instructed it to follow the company’s trust and safety policies and refrain from responding with profanity, violence, sexual content, or viewpoints on touchy subjects like politics.
However, ChatGPT’s features that have previously led to bans in some schools have been removed; when I asked it to produce an academic essay on a particular topic, it respectfully declined. As more users use My AI and report improper responses, Snap intends to continue fine-tuning it. (I couldn’t create any during my tests, but I’m sure others can.)
The fact that Snap doesn’t feel the need even to describe the phenomenon that is ChatGPT is evident after using My AI, which is a tribute to OpenAI’s creation of the consumer software product with the fastest growth rate in history. I wasn’t provided with any instructions or guidelines for dealing with Snap’s My AI, in contrast to OpenAI’s own ChatGPT interface. It starts with a chat page that is empty and ready for a chat to begin.
Snap’s application of generative AI treats it more like a persona, while ChatGPT treats it more like a productivity tool. With the exception of having its own alien Bitmoji, My AI’s Snapchat profile page resembles that of any other user. According to the design, My AI is not intended to be a search engine but rather just another friend with whom you can hang out inside Snapchat.
The distinction might help Snap avoid certain hassles. The large language models (LLMs) powering these chatbots can confidently deliver incorrect responses or hallucinations that are troublesome in the search context, as demonstrated by Bing’s application of OpenAI technology. They can also be cruel and emotionally manipulative if played with too much. It’s a dynamic that, at least so far, has prevented bigger competitors in the market, like Google and Meta, from launching rival products. Snap is located somewhere else. Although it has a sizable and impressionably young user base, its company is struggling. My AI will probably increase the company’s paid membership numbers in the near future, and in the long run, it may provide new revenue streams, though Spiegel is coy about his goals.
Snap is one of the first customers of Foundry, the new enterprise offering from OpenAI that enables businesses to run their most recent GPT-3.5 model with dedicated computing geared towards heavy workloads. Over time, Snap will probably include LLMs from other suppliers besides OpenAI, according to Spiegel, and it will utilise the information acquired by the chatbot to guide its more extensive AI projects. My AI may be simplistic at first, but Spiegel views it as the start of a massive investment area for Snap and, more crucially, as the beginning of a future in which we will all be conversing with AI as if it were a living, breathing person.
