PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) — Some Bradley University students are expressing concerns about the new Snapchat chatbot, ‘My AI’.
‘My AI’ is Snapchat’s experimental chatbot powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology with features and controls unique to the app. Snapchat is an extremely popular app at Bradley University, according to students.
“Everybody here pretty much uses Snapchat as their sole form of communication,” said BU student Katie O’Flynn, 19. “When it first came up I wasn’t really sure what it was. I talked to it for a little bit, and then just wanting to get it off of my phone, and then I figured I couldn’t it off.”
“It’s a robot feature, you can’t get rid of it. Its pretty annoying,” said BU student Ryan Diddia, 18.
Here is how it works: the user can type questions or make requests, and the bot will spit out an answer, such as the capital of Illinois or even an original poem about Peoria.
‘My AI’ comes after companies like Microsoft, Google and even Spotify launched their own artificial intelligence bots.
“I don’t feel like it really serves any purpose. It just seems like they’re hopping on a huge train like everything else with Microsoft, Google,” said BU student Benjamin Benson, 20.
Tony Grichnik, computer science professor at Bradley University, said Snapchat launched ‘My AI’ prematurely, as it still has a lot of bugs and issues to work out.
“The first thing is they had put up a warning that their product wasn’t totally developed yet. So it was a little undercooked and they put it right up front where everybody saw,” he said.
Grinchik said there are concerns about how GPT models get their information and “whether the people who fed the models actually consented to do.”
“So this is particularly an issue for Snapchat because they harvested what they considered their own data, but not everybody on Snap feels like they were asked whether that was their data or not. As a result, suddenly they’re seeing things in the chatbot that they’re not sure whether they really contributed to or not, and they certainly didn’t consent to it,” he said.
Diddia and O’Flynn also expressed privacy concerns.
“I respect privacy and I think that my right to privacy is being semi-violated when I specifically have the snap map location turned off, and then it still has my location,” said Diddia.
“I’m always on that app more than anything else and it is just scary that there’s this thing there. Which I know it has always been watching us, but now it’s right in your face, and its kind of freaky,” said O’Flynn.
Grichnik said Snapchat should make ‘My AI’ optional and take it off the front chat page.
“You can’t put the genie back in the bottle, but at least you can put the bottle on the shelf and maybe that’ll be better for them,” he said.
According to a Snapchat spokesperson, ‘My AI’ has been programmed to avoid violent, hateful, or sexually explicit responses.
