I’m very much aware that I have no control over the decisions social media apps and organizations make, but it would have been nice to know that a strange little AI bot was going to show up as a Snapchat friend.
I’m not sure about you, but AI scares the living life out of me. I’ve always thought that robots would be the end of us, and now that there is AI programs that can essentially do my job for me (I’m looking at you, ChatGPT), I’m even more terrified of the technology.
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So you can imagine the horror on my face when I opened Snapchat recently, and noticed that there is an AI bot as my friend that I can now just talk to. Whenever I feel like it, I can just send this AI bot a message, and it will respond to me.
Now, I remember back in the day of AIM instant messenger, you can chat with a computer bot, which I did all the time. It’s name was SmarterChild, and any millennial who used AIM will surely remember chatting with it. It’s pretty similar to what Snapchat’s AI bot does, but in the year 2023, the Snapchat AI seems way scarier.
There’s also the fact that you get to customize the Snapchat AI. Apparently, you can change the avatar to make it more personal, and give it a name. Instead of being called My AI, you can name is Kevin, for instance.
The movie “Megan” was just in theaters earlier this year, where we saw an AI doll go on a murder spree in order to protect it’s host. That movie just warned us about what personalized AI could do, and now Snapchat wants us to do just that!
Granted, Snapchat’s AI lives in your phone, and Megan was a life size doll, but still! It all just seems like a slippery slope.
Since AI has released their AI technology, parents of teens have raised alarms over the technology, and some users have called it “creepy.”
I have yet to strike up a conversation with the AI in my Snapchat account, and honestly, I have no plans to ever talk to it. I’m sure Snapchat has tons of date already on me, but I don’t need to be giving it any more, especially to a robot that wants to become personalized with me.
Will I delete the Snapchat app because of this? I’m still not sure. Since Snapchat isn’t forcing me to talk to it, I probably won’t, but if it gets any more intense, I am out. The whole thing reminds me of when Apple forced that U2 album onto all of our phones. No one asked for any of this!
