Launched last week to global users after initially being a subscriber-only addition, Snapchat’s new AI chatbot powered by OpenAI’s GPT technology is now pinned to the top of the app’s Chat tab where users can ask it questions and get instant responses. But following the chatbot’s rollout to Snapchat’s wider community, Snapchat’s app has seen a spike in negative reviews amid a growing number of complaints shared on social media.
Over the past week, Snapchat’s average U.S. App Store review was 1.67, with 75% of reviews being one-star, according to data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
I was optimistic about Snapchat’s My AI feature when it initially launched last month:
Snapchat has a new AI chatbot. They are, in hindsight, the perfect company to experiment with personality-driven chat. They have a younger user base, less fear of upsetting a stodgy corporate audience, and a history of being an early adopter to strange new technologies.
That was evidently an incorrect analysis. While it might be true the Snapchat company is well positioned to experiment with emerging technologies, the Snapchat user base certainly doesn’t universally appreciate being subject to these experiments.
On further reflection, I think the general principal that I wrote about a few weeks ago in regards to Google can be applied more broadly:
Generative AI is a fundamentally new technology; therefore, you should allow that to guide you into new products that were impossible or impractical previously. Attempting to shoehorn AI into existing products will be awkward, at best.
At the very least, if you are committed to the ill-advised “shoehorn” strategy, you should make these new features optional, ideally opt-in. No one appreciates it when a well-known user interface suddenly changes—no matter the reason that prompted the change.