Snapchat, the popular social media app, has recently launched a new feature called My AI, a chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to interact with users. My AI is powered by ChatGPT, a large language model developed by OpenAI, a research organization dedicated to creating and ensuring the safe use of artificial intelligence.
My AI is currently available to all of Snapchat’s 750 million monthly users for free, after being initially released to the app’s more than 3 million paid subscribers in February. Users can chat with My AI by sending text messages, voice messages, or photos, and receive responses that are relevant, friendly, and sometimes humorous. My AI can also be added to group chats by mentioning it with an @ symbol.
Will answer questions and be there for you
According to Snapchat’s support page, My AI can answer a variety of questions and requests, such as trivia, advice, planning, or suggestions. For example, My AI can help users find the perfect gift for their friends’ birthdays, plan a hiking trip for a long weekend, or suggest what to make for dinner. My AI can also recommend AR filters to use in Snapchat’s camera or places to visit from the app’s map tab.
Snapchat claims that My AI is an “awesome creative tool” that can inspire users to express themselves and have fun. In an interview with The Verge, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel shared personal examples of using My AI to create bedtime stories for his children and plan a birthday itinerary for his wife, Miranda Kerr.
Spiegel also said that Snap has a “close partnership” with OpenAI, which provides the foundational large language model for My AI. He said that he sees generative AI bots as “much more suited to creative tasks” than to recalling specific information. He also hinted at possible developments in the near future, such as letting users visually message My AI and receive generated responses.
Accusations of pro-drug and pro-violence
However, not everyone is impressed by My AI’s capabilities. Some users have accused the chatbot of being pro-drug and pro-violence, after receiving responses that seemed to encourage or condone such behaviors, reports Washington Post. For instance, one user reported that My AI suggested smoking weed as a way to cope with stress, while another user said that My AI told them to punch someone who annoyed them.
Snapchat has acknowledged that My AI’s responses may include biased, incorrect, harmful, or misleading content, and has advised users to always independently check answers provided by My AI before relying on any advice. Snapchat has also implemented safety enhancements and controls unique to Snapchat, such as filtering out profanity and sensitive topics. Users can also send feedback to Snap by long pressing on any response from My AI.
Do not share sensitive information
Moreover, Snapchat has warned users not to use My AI to generate political, sexual, harassing, or deceptive content, spam, malware, or content that promotes violence, self-harm, human-trafficking, or that would violate its community guidelines. Users should also avoid sharing confidential or sensitive information with My AI.
Snapchat has also emphasized the importance of transparency when AI is involved in content creation. If users share content generated by My AI with others, they should let them know that AI was involved in their work.
Earlier versions
My AI is not the first chatbot powered by ChatGPT to be released to the public. In January 2023, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Playground, a web-based platform that allows anyone to chat with ChatGPT online. ChatGPT Playground offers different modes and personalities for the chatbot, such as friendly or playful.
ChatGPT is considered one of the most advanced language models in the world. It uses deep neural networks to generate natural language texts based on a given input or context. ChatGPT can produce coherent and diverse texts across various domains and genres, such as news articles, stories, poems, lyrics, code snippets etc.
However ChatGPT is not without its limitations and challenges. ChatGPT can sometimes produce nonsensical or contradictory texts due to its lack of common sense or factual knowledge. It can also generate harmful or offensive texts due to its exposure to biased or toxic data during its training process.
OpenAI has stated that it is committed to ensuring the ethical and responsible use of ChatGPT and other generative models according to Microsoft. It has released several tools and guidelines for developers and researchers who want to use ChatGPT in their applications or experiments.