Snap My AI makes the chatbot available to all users

Snap has attracted more than 3 million users to its paid service Snapchat+. For $3.99 a month, subscribers get access to exclusive features, including Snap’s artificial intelligence-based chatbot.

The service launched last year, but the company began allowing users to access its chatGPT-based chatbot My AI in February.

“Snapchat” on Wednesday announced the availability of the My AI conversation program, which is subject to the preferences of each user on “Snapchat”, and is only available to “Snapchat +” subscribers.

The chatbot makes recommendations, answers users’ questions, helps with planning and can write Japanese poetry in seconds, the company said. Add it to conversations with friends by tagging it as: @MyAI. Users can give it a name and create a custom Bitmoji.

The move comes a month after OpenAI, ChatGPT’s developer, opened access to its software to third-party companies, CNN reported.

Snap, Instakart and Quizlet are among the first partners to experiment with adding ChatGBT to their services.

Since its launch in November 2022, ChatGBT has wowed users with its ability to create original articles, stories and lyrics in response to users’ questions. Companies rushed to release their versions of chatbots.

And Snap said Wednesday during its annual partner summit that growth exceeded the company’s expectations, including the addition of nearly one million paid users over the past 11 weeks.

“We didn’t expect to be able to grow to 3 million subscribers,” Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in an interview. We definitely saw some good speed with my AI.”

Spiegel said at the summit that his “medium-term” goal is for Snapchat+ to reach 10 million users.

“In more than 20 countries, 750 million people between the ages of 13 and 34 use Snapchat every month,” he said.

The progress so far indicates that Snap is steadily growing in a difficult area for social media companies: paid apps.

Elon Musk is struggling to attract users to his paid service “Twitter Blue” and “Meta” is testing a subscription package on “Instagram” and “Facebook” and has not yet disclosed the number of subscribers.

Like its social media peers, Snap is looking to offset the slowdown in ad revenue. The company’s overall sales growth stalled at the end of last year, and revenue will decline in the first half of 2023, according to Bloomberg.

Snap is dealing with the decline by laying off employees and putting projects on hold that it doesn’t consider a priority. This means refocusing efforts on user numbers and profitability, and on augmented reality technology.

Snapchat+ launched in June in select countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United Arab Emirates.

Snapchat was the first social network to adopt the “stories” format in 2013, which are ephemeral photos or videos, before most rival networks copied them. It is also a pioneer in visual communication and augmented reality. On Wednesday, Snap expanded the ability to generate revenue through the network to more content creators, improving their chances of being “discovered” by the public. The network recently launched Ares, a software for online stores that aims to integrate augmented reality tools such as virtual clothing.