Two weeks ago Snapchat launched “My AI,” an OpenAI-powered chatbot now available to users of Snapchat Plus.
As CEO Evan Spiegel told The Verge, conversations with the bot are primarily intended to be social:
“The big idea is that in addition to talking to our friends and family every day, we’re going to talk to AI every day… this is something we’re well positioned to do as a messaging service.”
It’s easy to write this move off as a classic hype-cycle headline, like NFT profile pics or Lowe’s metaverse play. And the real-world danger is less imminent than, say, a filter that shows the user’s speed. But I think the integration of chatbot technology into Snapchat could play into existing platform dynamics in unexpected, potentially worrying ways.
In my experience, describing Snapchat as a messaging platform doesn’t quite capture the way it’s used. Many snap conversations contain very basic information, or none at all. Snapchat incentivizes this through Streaks, the number of consecutive days you’ve snapchatted a particular person.1 While they’ve fallen out of favor, Streaks reflect an unintuitive idiosyncracy of Snapchat: The point often isn’t the conversations themselves, it’s the physical act of sending messages, which represents somewhat of a social ritual.
Metacommentary about this ritual regularly inspires content on other platforms. Teenagers on TikTok frequently complain that the person they constantly talk to on Snap won’t make eye contact with them at school. Being “left on delivered” has inspired many lamentations on the internet, while others bemoan those who ask for Snapchat usernames in lieu of a phone number, a sign of immaturity.2
This commentary reflects a certain intensity brought to the ritual of Snapchat. Consider the difference between the app and BeReal, which prompts all users to post an image at a random time in the day. BeReal is very casual, illuminating the same boring moments that a snap would. But the app’s utility is very limited, partly because there’s an incentive to limit the amount of people you follow (there are only so many people whose cereal bowls you want to see). Once you’ve checked in with everyone’s posts, you’re mostly done for the day.
The mechanics of Snapchat, on the other hand, encourage perpetual quasi-conversation.3 While tedious, these mechanics are deeply charged, reflecting one’s percieved social currency, romantic viability, and self-worth. When conversations are too dry to sustain, or you’re left on delivered, or you lose real-world contact with certain people, the ritual is lost. A chatbot seems quite capable of recreating some semblance of that act, and the social reassurance that comes with it.
I almost always play chess against computer. It’s not a great way to get better at the game — bots almost always make a weird move, or completely break past a certain point. Playing a real person is easy enough on Chess.com, but it’s also much more stressful (especially in a rated game). When I’m brushing my teeth, or waiting for something, or killing time, I just need an activity to occupy myself. The bot is good enough for this purpose, even if I’m basically just performing the mechanics of a chess game, not actually learning and improving.
Snap doesn’t expect My AI to replace real interaction. Instead, it’s supposed to be “another friend inside of Snapchat for you to hang out with.” Chatbots aren’t profound, insightful conversationalists. But they could be good enough.
Footnotes
I was in high school at the Streaks Peak™, ~2016-2018↩︎
Another example: A Snap Score is a number of how many snaps a user has sent/received since they made their account. Some users actively monitor the scores of their partners/romantic interests to gague how much they are talking to others.↩︎
The original gimmick of Snapchat was that messages automatically delete. This is actually inconvenient for having a conversation, since you can sometimes forget what the other person said or acidentally open their message (I’ve literally had to ask someone what they’ve said because I opened their chat without seeing it). The app has recently pushed features that fix this issue.↩︎