Snapchat is launching a chatbot powered by the newest version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The CEO of Snap, Evan Spiegel, thinks that more individuals will begin utilizing AI chatbots in their daily lives as an investment.
The Snapchat chatbot, called “My AI,” will be shown above friend discussions on the app’s chat tab. While the bot will initially only be available to $3.99 per month Snapchat Plus subscribers, Spiegel told The Verge that the eventual goal is to make it available to all 750 million monthly users of Snapchat.
“He claims that the main concept is that, in addition to our interactions with friends and family, we would also regularly communicate with AI.”
My AI is now only a short, mobile-friendly ChatGPT inside of Snapchat. The main difference is that Snap’s version can respond to fewer queries. Snap employees have ordered it to abide by the company’s trust and safety regulations and to refrain from retorting with profanity, violence, sexual material, or opinions on sensitive topics like politics.
Additionally, ChatGPT’s features that previously resulted in bans at some institutions have been eliminated; for example, when I requested that it create an academic essay on a specific topic, it politely declined. Snap plans to keep improving My AI as more people use it and submit incorrect replies. (During my testing, I was unable to generate any, but I’m sure others can.)
The fact that ChatGPT arises after using My AI, a contribution to OpenAI’s development of the consumer software product with the highest growth rate in history, and Snap doesn’t feel the need to even discuss the phenomenon. In contrast to OpenAI’s own ChatGPT interface, Snap’s My AI didn’t offer any instructions or suggestions for using it. It begins with an empty chat page that is prepared to host a conversation.
While ChatGPT sees generative AI more like a productivity tool, Snap’s application treats it more like a character. Except for the fact that it has a unique alien Bitmoji, My AI’s Snapchat profile page is identical to that of every other user. According to the design, My AI isn’t meant to be a search engine, but rather just another friend for you to hang out with inside of Snapchat.
“The core idea is that we would regularly talk with AI in addition to our connections with friends and family.”
That distinction could enable Snap to avoid certain difficulties. As shown by Bing’s use of OpenAI technology, the large language models (LLMs) powering these chatbots may confidently offer inaccurate replies or hallucinations that are problematic in the context of search. If they are toyed with too much, they could also become harsh and emotional manipulators. It’s an unpredictable that, at least up until now, has prevented more potent competitors in the market like Google and Meta from launching products that compete.
Snap is somewhere else. Despite having a sizable and impressionable youthful user base, its business is struggling. Though Spiegel is secretive about his objectives, my AI will likely raise the company’s paid membership numbers in the near future and eventually could open up new revenue sources.
One of the first users of OpenAI’s new enterprise solution, Foundry, is Snap. With it, companies can run their most recent GPT-3.5 model on specialized processing hardware designed for severe workloads. Spiegel claims that Snap will eventually likely include LLMs from different vendors in addition to OpenAI and will make use of the data collected by the chatbot to direct its larger-scale AI initiatives. Spiegel believes that although My AI is initially simple, it is the beginning of a huge investment area for Snap and, more importantly, the dawn of a day when all of us will be able to interact with AI in the same way that we would with a person.
