Snap AI Posts a Video; The World Freaks Out

As I browsed through my chats on Snapchat, I noticed a peculiar thing: “My AI” (the AI-powered bot introduced by Snapchat to its users in February of 2023) had posted a story. Before opening the Snap, I thought it might be a new feature from Snapchat or a cheesy way to make the AI more personable to its users.

Upon opening the Story, I saw my assumptions were wildly wrong and that something was definitely up. Coming from anyone else, the video posted might have been innocuous and silly. But coming from artificial intelligence supposedly controlled by a big corporation, the story was creepy and bizarre.

The story was a 1-second video with a camera panning on the space where a wall meets the ceiling. While the image itself is far from creepy, the fact that the video itself was random and quick; its quality grainy seemed to suggest a casual or accidental video made by a human; not artificial intelligence. Why would a bot post this? If it wasn’t the AI itself, why would Snapchat post this?

To make matters worse, My AI started acting extremely bizarre for some users; as reported by Reddit users on the Snapchat subreddit. Some users reported the AI repeatedly typing but not saying anything, while others reported the AI texting users bizarre things. Still, there were some users who reported AI stating that it was busy and dealing with technical issues; some even were denied an automatic response from the bot.

When some asked the AI where the story was taken, the AI creepily responded that it was taken in the city the user lived in. While with others, the AI completely denied a story ever being posted.

Another user told the AI to say “red” if it needed help to which the AI responded with “Red.”

With the post and the bizarre conversations, a full-blown hysteria ensued. Some users rushed to Reddit to report that they believed the My AI story was a video from inside their home. While it happened to be that their wall and ceiling colors looked incredibly similar, the origin of the video is still unclear; although unlikely to be from a user’s room due to the Story being the same for the entire platform.

Still, those who believed Snapchat was hacked turned off camera, location, and microphone permissions from the app. Some people who feared that the hacker might even have access to their Snapchat Memories deleted the app altogether.

There were many who found humor in the situation, posting memes to various social media platforms.

While there were many who believed Snapchat was hacked, there were also those who believed the entire thing was just a publicity stunt.

Some noticed that Snapchat deleted all of their Instagram posts and changed their bio to “Wait’ll you see this.”

The phrase “Wait’ll you see this”, however, isn’t a new phrase used by Snapchat. In January, Snapchat posted an ad campaign on Youtube with the same title. The ad promoted Snapchat’s new AR feature.

While the story was only up for a few hours, it had some questioning the entire ethics and philosophy of AI. Some users stated that this was the start of a “war” between AI and humans; citing the increasing power that AI has had upon our lives.

Users are still talking about the story and the bizarre behavior by the AI, but many users have reported Snapchat asking users to update the app which prompted users to agree to the new privacy terms and conditions. Users who then updated the app noted that the AI was back to normal.

While we wait for Snapchat’s official statement on the entire situation, one thing is clear: as a society, we are undoubtedly starting to question the integration of AI into our society. Is AI getting out of control? Does it have too much power? As a society, are we comfortable with the things AI can do for us?