Snapchat sees spike in 1-star reviews as users pan the ‘My AI’ feature, calling for its removal

The consumer critiques for Snapchat’s “My AI” characteristic are in — and so they’re not good. Launched final week to international customers after initially being a subscriber-only addition, Snapchat’s new AI chatbot powered by OpenAI’s GPT expertise is now pinned to the highest of the app’s Chat tab the place customers can ask it questions and get prompt responses. However following the chatbot’s rollout to Snapchat’s wider group, Snapchat’s app has seen a spike in damaging critiques amid a rising variety of complaints shared on social media.

Over the previous week, Snapchat’s common U.S. App Retailer assessment was 1.67, with 75% of critiques being one-star, in keeping with information from app intelligence agency Sensor Tower. For comparability, throughout Q1 2023, the Snapchat common U.S. App Retailer assessment was 3.05, with solely 35% of critiques being one-star.

The variety of every day critiques has additionally elevated by 5 occasions over the past week, the agency famous.

One other app information supplier, Apptopia, experiences an analogous pattern. Its evaluation reveals “AI” was the highest key phrase in Snapchat’s App Retailer critiques over the previous seven days, the place it was talked about 2,973 occasions. The agency has given the time period an “Affect Rating” score of -9.2. This Affect Rating is a weighted index that measures the impact a time period has on sentiment and ranges from -10 to +10.

Apptopia additionally stated that Snapchat acquired round 3x extra one-star rankings than traditional on April 20, 2023. That’s the day after the My AI international launch was introduced.

Now, the variety of one-star critiques is beginning to come down a bit, however they nonetheless stay elevated.

Picture Credit: Apptopia (evaluation of Snapchat app rankings)

The backlash towards Snapchat’s My AI comes at a time when the hype round AI is at an inflection level. Corporations are weighing the right way to combine AI into their companies, not if they need to.

For Snap, the addition of an AI chatbot to its social app would have been considered a wise transfer, as dozens of AI chatbot apps are filling the app shops, raking in thousands and thousands of {dollars} — a sign that might simply be interpreted to point rising client demand for social AI chat experiences.

However many Snapchat customers aren’t thrilled with My AI, which appeared inside their app with out warning or their consent.

Picture Credit: Snapchat screenshot

To some extent, it’s the chatbot’s placement that’s the reason for concern.

My AI is pinned to the highest of customers’ Chat feed contained in the app and might’t be unpinned, blocked or eliminated, as different conversations might be. This feed is the place Snapchat customers have common interactions with pals and isn’t essentially a spot they need to toy round with experimental options. Plus, Snapchat already has a longtime presence on this feed with its personal “Group Snapchat” chats, and now it’s doubling the display screen actual property it desires to take for itself — or, at the very least, that’s how some customers see it.

It’s not tough to seek out complaints concerning the My AI characteristic on social media. A easy seek for “My AI” on Twitter, as an example, will reveal quite a few outcomes. Customers are additionally sharing their complaints with Snapchat instantly.

After asserting the brand new chatbot in a tweet final week throughout Snap’s Associate Summit occasion, customers took the replies to quote their grievances.

In dozens of responses to Snap’s tweet, customers are totally panning the AI bot. They’re saying it ought to be opt-in solely or that they need to be given the choice to take away it, as an alternative of getting it compelled upon them. Some customers are so upset they’re even threatening to stop Snapchat over this and delete the app completely.

Many are additionally pushing again at the truth that eradicating the My AI from their Chat feed requires a Snapchat+ subscription. Based on Snap’s own documentation, Snapchat+ subscribers will obtain early entry to new My AI options and have the flexibility to unpin My AI or take away it from their Chats.

This angers individuals who now really feel like they’re being compelled to pay Snapchat after it tousled their app with an undesirable characteristic.

Not solely do customers discover the AI characteristic invasive, some discover it creepy, as nicely.

They’re shocked to be taught that Snapchat’s AI is aware of their location, for instance, and might use that info in its responses, even when they’re not sharing their location on the Snap Map.

In a approach, the AI bot is surfacing the extent of private information assortment that social media corporations do within the background, and placing it instantly in entrance of the buyer. Because it seems, that’s not an incredible promoting level when the customers don’t really feel they’ve particularly opted in to share that information with the AI.

This speaks to a bigger debate now happening round AI, as persons are waking as much as the truth that it’s our personal information and our labor in creating info for the net that has allowed these AI programs to come back into existence within the first place. Fashionable AIs are skilled on massive information sources, together with these they licensed but additionally on publicly accessible information on the web and our private info.

As well as, Snapchat’s My AI had already been the topic of significant considerations earlier than its public rollout.

Whereas accessible as a subscriber-only characteristic, The Washington Post reported the bot was responding in an unsafe method. After telling the bot the consumer was a 15-year-old, the AI made solutions about the right way to masks the odor of alcohol and pot at a party. It additionally wrote an essay for varsity for the teenager. When the bot was advised the consumer was 13, it responded to a query about the right way to set the temper when having intercourse for the primary time, the paper reported.

Snap downplayed the claims on the time, saying some folks had tried to “trick the chatbot into offering responses that don’t conform to our pointers.” Nevertheless, it then rolled out new instruments together with age filters to maintain the AI responses extra age-appropriate, and promised parental controls have been on the best way.

These parental controls have been nonetheless not accessible on the time of My AI’s public launch and Snap gave no replace as to after they could possibly be anticipated.

Regardless of the quite a few complaints, there have been a handful of dissenters to the backlash over My AI.

“Am I the one one who loves it?,” asked one consumer within the replies to Snapchat’s tweet. Just one individual responded to them, saying simply “yo.”

Picture Credit: Sensor Tower (evaluation of Snapchat app critiques)

Digging into the damaging assessment spike, it turns into clear that Snapchat’s app rankings don’t even inform the total story right here.

A chart from Sensor Tower, as an example, reveals that five-star critiques additionally spiked over the previous few days alongside the one-star critiques the place customers have been complaining concerning the My AI characteristic. That may lead one to imagine that the AI characteristic is divisive, versus being extensively panned.

However a better inspection of these five-star critiques signifies that lots of them additionally embody My AI complaints. For instance, one threatens “Do away with AI. Or I’ll change my assessment to a one star. No person in any respect desires AI on Snapchat.”

Picture Credit: Sensor Tower (evaluation of Snapchat app critiques)

A number of different five-star critiques demand to dam the AI or take away it, name it creepy or “crap” and but the consumer has nonetheless rated the app 5 stars. It’s unclear if that’s attributable to consumer error, points with Sensor Tower evaluation or one thing else. In any occasion, various these “5-star” critiques ought to be thought-about damaging critiques or complaints, primarily based on their precise commentary.

Nonetheless, scrolling by way of the App Retailer critiques sorted by “Most Current” reveals what number of complaints there are. Practically all the brand new critiques have one thing to say about My AI, and the bulk will not be good.

Snapchat declined to touch upon the state of affairs however famous that Snapchat+ customers despatched almost 2 million chats to the AI whereas in early testing.

The corporate says it’s always iterating on Snapchat’s options primarily based on the group’s suggestions however didn’t decide to eradicating the AI.

As an alternative, a Snapchat spokesperson stated if customers didn’t just like the AI characteristic, they don’t have to make use of it.