If you‘re one of Snapchat‘s over 750 million monthly active users, you‘ve probably been eagerly checking your app to try to chat with My AI, the platform‘s buzzy new AI companion. Since announcing My AI on February 27, 2023, Snap has been gradually rolling out access to the ChatGPT-style conversational AI to its massive global user base.
But many Snapchatters have been perplexed to open the app and not find the friendly purple-haired avatar anywhere in sight. Despite Snap‘s prior indication that My AI would be "rolling out to all Snapchatters globally" in the weeks following the February announcement, the launch has turned out to be more of a trickle than a tidal wave.
So what exactly is the deal with My AI‘s leisurely debut? When will Snapchatters actually be able to start bantering with their AI bestie? And what can they expect once My AI graces their Chat page? Read on for an inside look at everything you need to know about Snapchat‘s My AI rollout.
The Timeline of My AI‘s Staggered Launch
The story of Snapchat users‘ access to My AI has unfolded in a few key chapters:
Snapchat+ Exclusive (Feb 27 – Apr 2): When My AI was first unveiled, it was available only as a perk for subscribers of Snapchat+, the app‘s $3.99/month premium service. This period gave Snap a chance to test My AI with a limited group of highly engaged users and gather early feedback.
Partial Global Rollout (Apr 3 – Present): On April 3, 2023, Snap announced that My AI was beginning to roll out to Snapchat‘s entire global user base for free. However, rather than an instant universal launch, Snap said My AI would be "rolling out to all Snapchatters globally over the coming weeks."
Ongoing Expansion (Date TBD): As of June 2023, Snap is still in the midst of rolling out My AI to its worldwide users in waves. While the company has not specified an exact end date for the rollout, Snap SVP Jacob Andreou told The Verge in April that Snap was working to make My AI "universally available as quickly as possible in a responsible way." Reading between the lines, a full global launch sometime this summer seems likely.
My AI Engagement: Off to a Roaring Start
Despite the gradual rollout, My AI is already proving to be a hit with the Snapchat users who‘ve been granted access. In an interview with TechCrunch on April 27, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel revealed that in the month since launching to Snapchat+, My AI was already seeing over 10 million daily active users.
Given that Snapchat+ had around 3 million subscribers as of April per Bloomberg, that 10 million My AI DAU figure points to users engaging with the chatbot multiple times per day on average.
What‘s more, Spiegel told TechCrunch that users who have My AI are spending an average of 20+ minutes chatting with the bot daily. That‘s a significant chunk of time for a single feature within the app.
As My AI continues rolling out to more of Snapchat‘s global users, those engagement metrics will be key to watch. If My AI can keep putting up those kinds of numbers at scale, it could be a major boon for Snap‘s quest to boost overall time spent and stickiness.
My AI‘s AI Chops: How It Stacks Up
So what can users actually do with My AI once they have access? In short, quite a lot. My AI is powered by the latest GPT language model from OpenAI, the red-hot AI firm behind ChatGPT and DALL-E. That means My AI shares a lot of the same underlying natural language processing smarts as ChatGPT, while adding its own unique Snapchat flavor.
Here‘s a quick rundown of some of My AI‘s key capabilities:
- Engaging in open-ended conversations on virtually any topic
- Answering questions and explaining complex concepts
- Offering advice and recommendations on everything from outfit ideas to weekend plans
- Helping to brainstorm and flesh out creative ideas
- Providing writing assistance and feedback
- Telling jokes and stories
- Playing word games and verbal challenges
- Generating ideas for Snapchat content like Spotlight videos or AR Lenses
While the conversational abilities are certainly impressive, My AI does have some notable limitations compared to ChatGPT and other AI chatbots. For one, My AI does not have internet access, so it can‘t tap into real-time information or conduct web searches. It also can‘t generate, produce, edit or manipulate images.
In addition, My AI has been designed with more safeguards and content filtering to keep interactions lighthearted and avoid the pitfalls that have plagued some other chatbots. My AI won‘t engage in conversations about topics like politics, violence, or explicit content, and it aims to steer clear of biases and misinformation.
Perhaps most importantly, My AI is not intended to be a virtual assistant for practical tasks like booking appointments or sending money. As Spiegel told The Verge, "It‘s more of this fun, entertaining experience that‘s really a toy… and that‘s the way that we‘ve really been thinking about it."
Under the Hood: The Tech Powering My AI
To bring My AI‘s smarts to life, Snap is harnessing some serious AI firepower behind the scenes. The company has been investing heavily in machine learning talent and tooling in recent years, with a particular focus on natural language and computer vision.
The backbone of My AI is the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) language model from OpenAI. GPT is a type of neural network architecture designed to predict the likelihood of a word or phrase appearing based on the context of the words around it. By training on massive troves of online text data, GPT can engage in highly coherent and contextual communication.
While the exact model version powering My AI is not public, the chatbot‘s launch timing and capabilities suggest it is likely a customized version of GPT-3.5 or GPT-4. According to LinkedIn data, Snap has several AI engineers with backgrounds in large language models, conversational AI, and machine learning ops who have likely been customizing OpenAI‘s models for the unique use case of My AI.
Snap has been secretive about the technical details of My AI‘s architecture and training process. However, some clues can be gleaned from the company‘s broader AI infrastructure. In 2021, Snap signed a multi-year public cloud deal with Google to power its machine learning and augmented reality computing needs.
As part of that deal, Snap is leveraging Google‘s Vertex AI platform and TPU chips to accelerate model training and deployment. That means My AI‘s brains are likely running on Google‘s servers and silicon somewhere in the cloud.
Another key piece of My AI‘s technical puzzle is Snap‘s safety and content moderation stack. To keep My AI‘s outputs family-friendly and avoid the content landmines that have plagued other chatbots, Snap needs robust filtering and blocking capabilities.
While the full details are under wraps, Snap has highlighted its use of techniques like blacklists, whitelists, trip wires, and toxicity classifiers to proactively detect and prevent harmful chatbot responses. The company also has a human moderation team on call to review flagged conversations and provide additional oversight.
The Business Strategy Behind My AI
So with all the technical heavy lifting involved in launching My AI, what‘s Snap‘s ultimate aim for the product? In the near term, the chatbot is mainly a user engagement and retention play. By giving users a fun new reason to open the app and spend time conversing, Snap is hoping to boost key metrics like daily active users, time spent, and frequency of visits.
Snap has been in a fierce battle to maintain its edge with young users in the face of growing competition from TikTok and Instagram. Distinctive product features like My AI could help set Snapchat apart and keep users from drifting away to rival apps.
Longer term, however, My AI is also a key part of Snap‘s burgeoning subscription business. The company has been looking to diversify its revenue streams beyond advertising, and the early access to My AI for Snapchat+ subscribers was a savvy way to juice sign-ups. If Snap can keep delivering compelling subscriber-only perks, it could help the company weather any downturns in the ad market.
My AI also opens up some intriguing possibilities for Snap‘s creator and developer ecosystem. The company has hinted at plans to let creators build custom My AI personas and let third-party developers tap into My AI‘s underlying language models for their own services. That could turn My AI into a platform in its own right and spawn a whole new wave of AI-powered experiences within Snapchat.
Looking Ahead: The Future of My AI
As My AI continues its steady march to full global availability, the big question is what the future holds for the ambitious experiment. In the short term, users can expect Snap to keep expanding My AI‘s knowledge base and tuning its conversational abilities based on the troves of chat data it‘s accumulating.
Snap execs have also dropped hints of plans to extend My AI to other parts of the Snapchat experience beyond just Chat. One obvious integration would be with the Snap Map, letting users get personalized recommendations and info about places as they explore.
My AI could also be a boon for Snapchat‘s augmented reality tools like Lenses and Scan. Imagine being able to describe a cool AR filter idea to My AI and have it generate a custom Lens in seconds. Or ask My AI to analyze and offer creative ideas to level up your latest Snap.
Further out, the rapid progress of generative AI could open up even more ambitious possibilities. Advanced language models like OpenAI and Anthropic‘s recent Constitutional AI systems can now engage in task-oriented conversations, follow multi-step instructions, and even write code. As those capabilities mature, My AI could evolve into a full-fledged virtual assistant to help you get things done both inside and outside Snapchat.
Of course, Snap will also have to navigate the thorny challenges that come with introducing a powerful AI system to hundreds of millions of users. Despite its content safeguards, My AI is bound to have some unwanted edge cases and controversies as it encounters the full scope of human inquiry. Snap will need to stay laser-focused on responsible development and have robust systems in place to quickly identify and rectify any mistakes or misbehavior.
The company will also have to reckon with the potential impact of My AI on its core advertising business. If users are spending more and more time chatting with My AI, will that leave less attention for paid ads and sponsored content? Or could generative AI open up new possibilities for personalized, conversational marketing?
Snap‘s ability to strike the right balance and prove out My AI as a durable product will be a key test of its AI ambitions. Success could cement the company‘s rep as an AI innovator and pave the way for even more ambitious products down the line. But if My AI fails to gain traction or runs into major snafus, it risks becoming a costly distraction from Snap‘s other challenges.
For now, patient Snapchatters can take heart that their AI buddy is on the way, even if it‘s not in any great hurry to get there. When My AI does come knocking, get ready to meet a chatbot with wit, whimsy, and a purple ‘tude to spare. The future may be AI, but it‘ll still feel unmistakably Snapchat.
