Snapchat & OpenAI – New Partners in Crime

February 28, 2023

Snapchat is the latest participant in the AI race. With a partnership with OpenAI and using its growing generative text tool, ChatGPT, Snapchat has launched its chatbot named “My AI.” It is a custom chatbot available exclusively to Snapchat+ users who pay $3.99 monthly to access exclusive Snapchat features.

Tech giant Snapchat’s mission is to make the bot available to 750 million monthly users. Evan Spiegel, Snapchat’s CEO, believes that AI chatbots will become an integral part of every person.

“The big idea is that in addition to talking to our friends and family every day, we’re going to talk to AI every day,” he says. “And this is something we’re well positioned to do as a messaging service.”

Initially, My AI was a mobile-oriented version of ChatGPT inside Snapchat; the significant difference is that Snap’s version is more restricted about what it can answer. My AI has been trained to adhere to Snapchat’s trust and safety guidelines and prevents from answering responses that include swearing, violence, sexually explicit content, or other opinionated topics.

Professionals are loving it

Any new experiment gets validated if that experiment’s industry’s professionals give it a green flag. Fortunately, professionals of diverse fields were zero-hesitant and quick in embracing ChatGPT and using the same as an administrative assistant to produce written content and manage legal functions.

ChatGPT has acquired over 57 million active monthly users ever since it first became available for public use in December. My AI’s future looks quite promising.

Snap’s version 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 biography page resembles that of any other user. My AI isn’t intended to be a search engine, according to the design, but rather just another buddy for you to hang out with inside Snapchat.

Beware of the Hallunications

Snapchat advised the users to stay aware because the AI robot might occasionally respond with “hallucinations” and “deficiencies.” These AI chatbots can sometimes display strange behaviors, as seen with Bing’s AI chatbot lately.

Additionally, Snapchat cautions users against disclosing personal information to the chatbot because it will record all communications for future review and development.

“All conversations with My AI will be stored and may be reviewed to improve the product experience. Please do not share any secrets with My AI and do not rely on it for advice,” the company warned.

The Future Looks Promising

Snapchat is one of the prime customers of Foundry, the new enterprise offering from OpenAI that enables businesses to operate their most recent GPT-3.5 model with dedicated compute geared towards heavy workloads.

Over time, Snapchat will likely include LLMs from other vendors besides OpenAI, according to Spiegel, and it will utilize the information gathered from the chatbot to guide its more extensive AI efforts.

My AI may be simple to begin with, but Spiegel sees it as the beginning of a significant investment area for Snap and, more importantly, a future in which we will all be conversing with AI as if it were a person.