Snapchat is introducing its own version of ChatGPT, which is customized for younger users. (Source: Adobe Stock)

Snapchat Hopes ‘My AI’ Will Attract Users of ChatGPT to Its Knock-Off

We can imagine it’s possible that you have not tried AI dominating all the headlines as of late. And if you missed the latest chapter on the growth of AI in our universe, we are talking about ChatGPT. Other chatbots are available, but ChatGPT from OpenAI and Microsoft took off when it was released in November of 2022.

The number of users for ChatGPT is said to be 100 million worldwide. People began using this generative AI to write term papers, letting it become a phone assistant for certain delivery services and more. It’s incredibly fast at answering the queries by users and while not always perfect, it has come a long way. Seeflction.com has carried several stories about ChatGPT just in the last few months.

Now comes the news from theguardian.com that Snapchat is going to make a similar chatbot available to its customers. Not everyone is thrilled with this idea.

Snapchat is releasing its GPT-powered AI chatbot to every user for free, the company announced at its annual developer conference, as it tries to chart a distinctive path between the titans of Instagram and TikTok.

That means expanding access to its AI chatbot, doubling down on the distinction between public and private posts, and paying successful creators a share of the revenue their viral content generates. First released for paying members of the social network’s Snapchat+ subscription service, “My AI” shows up as another chat contact in the social network’s app.

Similar to ChatGPT, users can ask it factual questions, request creative content, and have back-and-forth conversations with the service.

Snap’s vice president of products, Jack Brody, said this on the new product:

“The idea is you snap My AI and it can snap you back. In the early days, most of the experiences are really just fun and playful, and exciting to experiment with. There’s certainly opportunities to make that a useful feature as well: one of the things that’s been fun is snapping it some ingredients and it can send you back a recipe.”

Early Problems Corrected

The people working at Snapchat knew there were problems when this chatbot was first tried with users that were paying for it back in March of this year. It seems the AI was being a little too graphic for younger users during some early interactions, as reported by the Washington Post.

The “My AI” addition will be a new approach to what has been a three-way competition between Snapchat, Instagram, and Tik Tok fighting for the same demographic of users. By adding the chatbot, Snapchat sees it as another tool for users or influencers to produce content. The goal is to go viral of course. And Snapchat pays a good amount of money to the more successful content creators, although they have lowered those payouts a bit recently.

“A lot of other platforms really breed this pressure to be perfect, and we’ve seen that that can lead to creator burnout,” he added. “What we hear back from them is that Snapchat is a place where they feel like they can be themselves, where they can post without worrying so much about making sure it’s perfect or perfectly edited.”

Almost three years after the company launched its TikTok-style Spotlight feed, alongside a $1m daily prize fund for the most-viewed videos, Snapchat is also doubling down on paying creators for their viral success. So get busy influencers. Let’s see what kind of content you create with your new  “My AI” assistant chatbot. We are reasonably certain it will be fascinating.

read more at theguardian.com