Snapchat Launches Its Own Chatbot AI to Rival ChatGPT
Snapchat Plus subscribers can access the feature starting this week.
- Apple software beta tester, "Helps make our computers and phones work!" - Zach's grandparents
Snapchat Plus subscribers can ask My AI for birthday gift ideas for a friend and more.
Snapchat on Monday said it is launching its own generative artificial intelligence chatbot, called My AI, powered by the latest version of OpenAI's GPT technology, the same technology used in ChatGPT. Snapchat calls My AI an experimental feature, and it'll start rolling out to Snapchat Plus subscribers this week.
In a blog post, Snapchat wrote that My AI can help plan a weekend hiking trip, suggest a recipe to try for dinner and more. It can also write a haiku if you're feeling poetic.
"My AI was trained to have a unique tone and personality that plays into Snapchat's core values around friendship, learning, and fun," a Snapchat spokesperson said in an email to CNET. "It has been trained to adhere to our trust and safety guidelines."
While Snapchat wrote that My AI was designed to avoid biased, incorrect or harmful information, the company also noted that the AI feature "can be tricked into saying just about anything." When an AI creates incorrect information that sounds plausible, that information is called a hallucination.
Snapchat will store and potentially review conversations users have with My AI to help improve the feature. Users can also send feedback directly to Snapchat by long pressing on a My AI response and sharing it with Snapchat.
It's unclear if My AI will be available to Snapchat users who don't subscribe to Snapchat Plus.
Snapchat is the latest tech company to integrate AI into its platform. On Feb. 6, Google unveiled its own ChatGPT rival, called Bard. "Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world's knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of our large language models," Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai tweeted at the time.
Then on Feb. 7, Microsoft unveiled a new version of its Bing search that incorporates ChatGPT. Microsoft then said that longer chats can cause bizarre responses, and that it would try to fix errors in the tool. Not long after the announcement, Microsoft limited its Bing AI chat to a handful of responses so the conversations wouldn't get too strange.
For more, check out what you need to know about generative AI like ChatGPT, why people are interested in ChatGPT and why one of the founding fathers of the internet has called technology like ChatGPT "snake oil."
Editors' note: CNET is using an AI engine to create some personal finance explainers that are edited and fact-checked by our editors. For more, see this post.
