Snapchat's 'My AI' chatbot: Your teen's new online BFF? – wnky.com
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BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Snapchat’s new My AI chatbot feature is the talk of social media.
Powered by viral artificial intelligence platform ChatGPT, the My AI avatar replies to your chats and pictures, talking to users just like a friend.
Users, you can’t remove the feature from your chat feed… that is, unless you’re willing to pay the $3.99 monthly Snapchat+ fee. Snapchat says they’ve placed ethical guardrails on the feature.
However, Southcentral Kentucky Community and Technical College Dean of Business & Information Technology Chris Royse points out, “These technologies are moving faster and being developed faster than the philosophy of the ethics behind them can keep up. So, we’re really kind of building these very quickly and then looking back and saying, ‘Oh, how did that go wrong? Let’s go ahead and put in some guardrails.’”
Royse says this is a good time for parents to establish guidelines for young teenagers using the app.
“It’s very important to have the conversation, especially with young folks, that that’s not a human being. It doesn’t understand context. It’s using information that already exists in the world and it can have some implicit bias that maybe it doesn’t intend to. It doesn’t know how to not hurt your feelings with some of the things that it may be responding with.”
He says it’s also wise to remind young users that though their chats might disappear, this virtual friend has a very good memory.
“As you get into that conversation with AI, it’s easy to let your guard down. You need to remember that this is a robot that you’re talking to and it doesn’t maybe have malice, but it could actually use that information in a negative way that you didn’t intend to.”
Love the new feature or hate it, Royse says artificial intelligence integrations like these are only evolving.
“It has a lot of potential, but it’s something that we’re going to have to learn to live with.”
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