• by Colin Kirkland , February 27, 2023

On Monday, Snap announced “My AI,” a new customized chatbot running the latest version of OpenAI’s groundbreaking GPT technology.

The new feature is integrated directly into Snapchat and will be available for the social platform’s premium subscribers this week.

According to Snap, My AI is able to “recommend birthday gift ideas for your BFF, plan a hiking trip for a long weekend, suggest a recipe for dinner, or even write a haiku about cheese for your cheddar-obsessed pal.”

While leading tech giants like Google and Microsoft are using OpenAI’s text-generating technology to revolutionize search, Snapchat is hoping My AI will provide its users with a fun customizable activity to add to their in-app experiences.

The company is treating My AI like another Snapchat friend, offering users the ability to give My AI a name and choose a wallpaper for their chat.

“As with all AI-powered chatbots, My AI is prone to hallucination and can be tricked into saying just about anything,” Snap wrote in a recent statement. “Please be aware of its many deficiencies and sorry in advance!”

The company is referencing potential biased, incorrect, harmful, or misleading information mistakes that may occur in the feature’s initial rollout, adding that users should “press and hold on any message from My AI to submit feedback.”

In addition, Snap mentioned that all AI-powered conversations on its social platform will be stored and open to review in order to continuously improve the product experience. Because of this, Snap cautions its users not to “share any secrets with My AI” or “rely on it for advice.”

According to TheVerge, My AI likely won’t get Snapchat into too much trouble. Snap employees have trained the program to adhere to the company’s trust and safety guidelines, making it more restricted in what it can answer compared to OpenAI’s original version of ChatGPT.

For example, My AI isn’t supposed to give responses that include profanity, violence, sexually explicit content or opinions about controversial topics such as politics. Snap's integrated chatbot program will not compose full academic essays, either -- a function that has resulted in ChatGPT being banned in some schools.

OpenAI quietly launched a new developer platform it is calling “Foundry” that allows customers with large workloads to run the company’s newer machine learning models like GPT-3.5. Snap is one of its first clients.