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 My AI is great for recommending birthday gift ideas or writing “a haiku about cheese for your cheddar-obsessed pal.”
Snapchat reaches monthly active users, including 75% of 13- to 34-year-olds in 20+ countries.
Despite these impressive numbers, the company has 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 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!”