Snap is offering its 750 million monthly active users access to My AI, the social media platform’s artificial intelligence-powered chatbot.

Launched in February, the My AI chatbot was initially available to subscribers of Snap’s premium service. The company has now extended the offering to all of its users, the Financial Times said in a report.

The chatbot, powered by OpenAI’s language model, ChatGPT, allows users to have human-like conversations with individual users or groups and respond with visual content on top of messages.

However, unlike the ChatGPT system, My AI includes age-appropriate safety features to cater to Snap’s young audience and regulators’ rising concerns about teen safety on online platforms.

“There are always risks when there’s new technology, which is why we’ve tried to be really thoughtful about how we’ve rolled out My AI,” chief executive Evan Spiegel told the Financial Times.

Spiegel added that Snap stores the conversations users have with the AI chatbot in order to review them, noting that more than 99% of the AI’s responses to users so far follow its community guidelines.

Snap Announces AR Services for Businesses

Snap also announced new augmented reality services for businesses. Called AR Enterprise Services (ARES), the product is designed to assist brands in providing sizing and fitting recommendations to potential customers.

The company will sell a new device resembling a physical mirror that will allow users to see themselves with clothes overlaid on their images. The mirror device builds on Snap’s existing tools that incorporate similar AR features.

The latest initiatives are part of Snap’s ongoing efforts to revive its fortunes and boost growth in the face of shrinking ad revenue.

In January, its stock plummeted by 14%, adding to the 80% already lost in 2022 when the company indicated its revenue would decrease by up to 10% in the first quarter.

Various factors, such as wider economic challenges and changes in Apple’s privacy policies, have contributed to the company’s declining fortunes.

To address the challenges, the company has undergone a significant restructuring, which involved laying off a fifth of its 6,500 workforces and paring back investments in hardware initiatives, such as augmented reality smart glasses.

Social Media Platforms Look For Alternative Streams of Revenue

Aside from Snap, other social media platforms are also looking for alternative streams of revenue amid dropping user interest and increasing competition.

More specifically, social media giants have been aggressively investing in groundbreaking technologies to power a new phase of growth.

For instance, Facebook’s parent company Meta has deployed artificial intelligence to enhance advertising systems and has spent billions of dollars building a metaverse accessed through virtual reality headsets.

Furthermore, Meta is building “a new top-level product group” to integrate generative AI into WhatsApp and Messenger, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced earlier this year.

More recently, education technology company Chegg launched a new study aid software that offers personalized study guides and practice tests to students using the power of AI.