Snapchat gets the AI treatment

Today in missed opportunities, Snapchat announced a GPT-powered personalized avatar named “My AI” (and not “SnapChatGPT”).

To be fair, the name appears especially intentional: With a customizable name and avatar, My AI is designed to feel more like a friend than a search engine or productivity tool, which helps differentiate its use case from those of Bing and Google.

• Snapchat says My AI is great for recommending birthday gift ideas or writing “a haiku about cheese for your cheddar-obsessed pal.”

Snapchat reaches 750m monthly active users, including 75% of 13- to 34-year-olds in 20+ countries.

Despite these impressive numbers, the company has posted disappointing earnings, shed staff, and shelved projects, and its stock is down ~75% YoY.

My AI will initially only be available through Snapchat’s $3.99/mo. premium offering, which could help grow its subscription business, though the plan is for all users to eventually have access, per The Verge.

What about AI safety? “As with all AI-powered chatbots,” Snapchat says, “My AI is prone to hallucination and can be tricked into saying just about anything… Sorry in advance!”