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Panic Spreads As Snapchat’s AI Goes Rogue, Refuses To Answer And Uploads Own Story

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On Tuesday, August 15, Snapchat users reported that the social media service’s AI program, called Snapchat My AI, went rogue by uploading its own story and refusing to respond to messages.

Originally launched earlier this year, Snapchat My AI is programmed to respond to users’ messages like a friend would. However, on Tuesday, the program both stopped responding and uploaded its own Snapchat Story.

Eventually, when the AI did decide to respond again, it said “Sorry, I encountered a technical issue”, followed by a flushed face emoji, according to some users.

When reached out for comment, Snapchat said that the glitching AI was the result of an “outage” that has since been fixed.

Given the increased anxiety around artificial intelligence and its growing capabilities, Snapchat users were quite freaked out upon discovering that the program went rogue, albeit temporarily.

Perhaps even more worryingly, though, is the fact that people seemed to be getting different responses from the AI.

Snapchat My AI gave different explanations when pressed about it posting its own story

https://twitter.com/hhollythompsonn/status/1691623181390364986

Snapchat’s My AI having an “outage” is just the latest in a litany of artificial intelligence-related headlines that have been made over the last year or so in the wake of the public launch of ChatGPT and similar chatbot programs.

Nevertheless, due to the nearly unflappable sense of humor that the internet possesses, even a potentially self-aware social media robot became fodder for memes.

First launched back in 2011, Snapchat is a multimedia instant messaging service that began as a way to share photos/videos that would automatically erase themselves after being viewed. In recent years, though, Snapchat has begun to focus on the use of virtual stickers and augmented reality objects, leading to it becoming popular with Generation Z.

As of the second quarter of 2023, Snapchat reportedly had 397 million daily users on the platform, making it one of the biggest social media apps in the world.