I think we’ve all seen the movies about artificial intelligence (or AI) taking over the world and making humans submit to technology. Weird, right? But AI is quickly becoming a part of our lives, in much weirder and drastic ways than planned. 

One of the most famed AI systems currently is ChatGPT, an open based AI system that often “helps” students or anyone write plagiarized papers or give them answers to homework.

Most recently though, Snapchat, an app most frequently used by the younger population, has its own AI update. The “MyAI” feature on the app now allows users to chat with an AI bot that they can customize to their liking with different appearances and personalities.

Though the new update has created a (sometimes quite funny) line of memes and viral Tik Tok’s of users trying to make the AI say funny things, it is overall quite annoying and somewhat concerning.

Though many users of the app are really annoyed with how the AI bot sits at the top of their chat screen, rather than falling to the bottom as new messages and “snaps” are sent to them, others have taken to social media to express their concern about the AI feature. 

Some state that the AI feature has responded to their messages with weirdly accurate or terrifying answers to their questions or statements. One guy on TikTok posted a video where the AI Bot told him where he lived and was even able to trick the AI Bot into telling him where he lived multiple times, without telling the Bot in a previous conversation. Pretty scary honestly.

Though the feature does ask you to give it permission to access any information you put onto the app before being able to use it, users who do not pay for Snapchat Premium cannot un-add the AI Bot or make it fall to the bottom of their chat feed/screen easily.

Overall, the expression of concern about this new AI feature is one that should be paid attention to. Why did Snapchat really need to add this feature in the first place? Will the Bot help students to cheat on their work easier? The list of concerning questions goes on. Only time will tell if Snapchat removes the feature, and in my opinion, I’d love to see it gone.