What was the Snapchat Glitch all about? AI issues?

The Snapchat chatbot uncharacteristically posted its own story earlier this week, leading many users to believe that the AI was acting strangely. According to Snapchat, the recent problems with its AI chatbot were the consequence of a bug rather than instances of the feature acting strangely.

Snapchat users complained earlier this week on X, formerly Twitter. The My AI chatbot function writes its own story on the app and fails to reply to messages from users. One user wrote on the platform, “My Snapchat AI posted a random one-second story and isn’t replying to me AND IM FREAKED OUT.” Another said in jest, “It became sentient.”

Although My AI doesn’t frequently publish its own Snapchat stories. The OpenAI ChatGPT-powered chatbot serves as a virtual friend to users of the platform. It also provides replies to questions much like a conventional generative AI model. Another user commented, “Why does My AI have a video of the wall and ceiling in their house as their story?” They found it “very weird and honestly unsettling.” After being ignored by My AI, a fourth person made the quip, “Even a robot ain’t got time for me.”

Many people wondered if the AI had gone rogue and formed a mind of its own because of its unpredictable behavior

Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, quickly put out the fires, though. The product, which was powered by ChatGPT, was initially released in February for users of Snapchat+. It was then made freely accessible to all Snapchat users shortly after.

One of several tech firms attempting to use generative AI in their goods and services is Snap. As interest in and use of the technology continue to rise, Microsoft, Google, and Spotify all launched their own AI features earlier this year. When Snap presented its earnings report last month, the company’s shares reportedly fell more than 17 percent. As a result of a bleak outlook for the following three months.

According to CEO Evan Spiegel, 4 million people signed up for the premium Snapchat+ service a year after it launched. While the number of daily active users on Snapchat has increased by 14% over the previous year to 397 million. However, revenue fell by 4% from $1.111 billion to $1.068 billion.