[HN Gopher] Snapchat sees spike in 1-star reviews as users pan t...
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Snapchat sees spike in 1-star reviews as users pan the 'My AI'
feature
Author : mmq
Score : 102 points
Date : 2023-04-24 16:18 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| htrp wrote:
| I wonder if this was part of the deal to get early access to a
| lot of the new openai models?
|
| OpenAI gets real human data from snap and snap gets to say
| they're an AI company.
| root_axis wrote:
| The experience just sucks, it's a glorified ChatGPT wrapper with
| all the "As an AI language model..." warts. The stilted
| mechanical speech of ChatGPT does not resonate with the snapchat
| user demographic. Snapchat is a wild place, 80% of the real
| conversations on that platform would be flagged in red TOS
| violation text were it pasted into ChatGPT.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| A lot of these AI tools are going to be grafted on to existing
| products without thinking through user consent or the overall
| experience so companies can show that they're "AI forward"
| pram wrote:
| It's not even new, that's what's crazy. How many people wanted
| shit like Cortana? It was finally mercifully killed but here we
| are yet again.
| klyrs wrote:
| Microsoft Bob was a commercial failure, so they introduced
| Clippy to Word for free. Surprise surprise, people still
| didn't want it.
| epistasis wrote:
| Right now AI is a lot like VR headsets. A really cool tech trick
| but not something that most people want to use regularly. Let the
| interested early adopter at it, but forcing this on to users will
| not go very well. It's just too creepy.
|
| Silicon Valley got pretty lucky with figuring out social media,
| but I think it still does not understand most people very well.
| jutrewag wrote:
| Hard disagree. Anecdotally, everyone in my friend group uses
| chatGPT/Bing many times a day.
| jrpt wrote:
| I couldn't disagree more. It's clear AI is going to have huge
| impacts on the world. It's just getting started though.
|
| Imagine every time you call support, instead of having some
| annoying rules-based automated system, you're having a natural
| conversation with an AI that is fluent in your language. That's
| possible with today's technology, it just hasn't been built out
| and deployed yet.
| epistasis wrote:
| Even if AI has huge impacts on the world, and does a lot of
| great things, that in no way negates my point.
|
| Right now, almost nobody have an interest in AI chat bots.
| Even fewer want to have it in SnapChat. And honestly I really
| don't want an AI bot for customer service, especially at the
| current stage of tech dev, because the AI bots are completely
| unreliable and hallucinate and lie regularly. (Which is to
| say that I heartily doubt your assertion that current AI tech
| would enable customer service bots that are useful. They
| produce wonderful prose, but semantics and action are not
| there, and we don't have training datasets yet to enforce
| accuracy in prose or action)
|
| So let's say they become useful, great. But today they are
| still a VR headset, something that's fun to experience for a
| bit, but which I don't want to be part of my daily
| experience. It's a novelty, not a useful tool, for nearly
| everyone out there today.
|
| Make it useful, attractive to most people, and we are in a
| different regime, and forcing features like this on all your
| users might be seen as a positive rather than a negative.
| latexr wrote:
| Imagine instead that you could speak to a human. One with the
| authority and skills to truly help you. _That_ is the dream,
| not a less shitty robot.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Yeah I love companies that just put a real human on the
| phone who knows what they're talking about. All of the
| problems I'd want a support number for are impossible for
| an AI to solve, and putting a speaking AI in between me and
| a real human would just annoy the crap out of me.
|
| I bet Comcast is working on it as we speak.
| rchaud wrote:
| It's closer to blockchain. Unprofitable companies are rushing
| to jam in something, anything in there so they have something
| to tell Wall St on the earnings call.
| hbn wrote:
| I don't know how you can think that. Random companies
| scrambling to get in on the hype to look good for investors is
| one thing. But the actual good applications coming out of AI
| are already getting integrated into people's daily workflows.
| ChatGPT is a genuinely useful product to tons of people.
|
| Most people I know who bought a VR headset on the other hand
| thought it was cool for a couple weeks then it was never
| touched again.
| mhh__ wrote:
| AI is already way more important than VR. I have had _a lot_ of
| people tell me that they are already making serious
| economically-impactful use of AI both personally and
| professionally, many others are the same.
|
| The failure of Snapchat here is doing AI for the sake of AI.
| delecti wrote:
| My most successful use of AI so far was that Bard's answer
| was so useless that it made me realize the actual problem.
| Invoking Cunningham's Law isn't really a success on its own
| merit though.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| What was the question and what did it answer? For me as a
| startup founder, it's cutting down my coding time to 1/4 of
| what it would have been, since I can ask ChatGPT clarifying
| questions and ask it for direct code examples.
| htormey wrote:
| I disagree. ChatGPT reached 100 million MAUs 2 months after
| launch. It's one of the fastest-growing consumer applications
| in history.
|
| Anecdotally, lots of my non technical friends (and me) are
| using it for everything from cooking to learning a foreign
| language.
|
| Lots of my technical friends are using it for side projects on
| the weekends. I'd say it's the top new technology all of them
| are working with or incorporating into their workflows.
|
| I and all of my teammates are using it to help us write sql and
| answer basic programming questions.
|
| It's clearly a way bigger deal than VR right now.
|
| The problem here seems to be that Snap rammed this feature into
| their product in a really awkward fashion that doesn't make
| sense for their users. Hence the backlash.
|
| source: https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2023/02/chatg...
| ______ wrote:
| Last night I was typing on Google: "How do I get (rid of wax from
| pots and pans)" and the top auto-suggestion at that point was
| "How do I get rid of my ai on snapchat"
|
| Must be a big issue if they own the "How do I get" SEO :)
| inadequatespace wrote:
| How... did you get wax on the pots and pans in the first place?
| Making candles or something?
| hangonhn wrote:
| High carbon pans come from the factory with a wax coating to
| prevent rust during storage and shipment. Before you can
| season the pan you need to remove the wax coating first.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Wax has fun uses.
| ______ wrote:
| Making mushroom logs!
|
| I cut down a few invasive trees recently (Norway Maples). If
| you inoculate the branches and logs with spores of a mushroom
| that you want (in my case, shiitake) during the first few
| weeks after cutting, it will fruit with that for a few years.
| It's a fun DIY project, and a way to reuse trees.
|
| To prevent unwanted mushrooms from the environment from
| colonizing, you seal the holes you drill, as well as the end
| the ends of the logs, with cheese wax - which I had heated in
| a crock pot, hence the need for cleaning that up.
| homerowilson wrote:
| Very cool. I regularly plug logs with various spawn (lately
| hericium) and have had good luck covering the plug with
| natural clay instead of wax, which unfortunately I have
| tons of in my yard. In my case, the cover is mostly to
| prevent rodents from eating the mushroom spawn, which they
| seem to love.
| horttemppa wrote:
| So how did you get rid of the wax? I was inoculating logs a
| year ago and the jars are still waiting for clean up.
| coolspot wrote:
| Answer from Snapchat My AI: Mix baking soda and water
| into a paste, then use it to scrub the wax off.
| usrusr wrote:
| Oh great, now I wonder what the mushrooms would suggest
| for getting rid of Google
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Personally I'd try Bar Keepers Friend
| ajb wrote:
| Always been a bit suspicious of that since it contains
| oxalic acid, which is toxic. I assume it's water soluble
| enough to get rid of easily before you use the surfaces
| for food though.
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| The traditional method of getting wax out of clothes is a
| hot iron and brown paper. I daresay the same principle -
| melt the wax and soak it up - could be applied to other
| surfaces.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Haven't tried this specific instance but kerosene (which
| is the major component of WD40) is a great solvent for
| waxes.
| nrjames wrote:
| I made an unholy mess with wax on pans yesterday, trying to
| melt down old comb from a deadout bee hive in a hot water
| bath.
|
| Word to the wise: go to the thrift store and pick up some old
| pots and spoons before attempting this.
| sieste wrote:
| > They're surprised to learn that Snapchat's AI knows their
| location, for example, and can use that information in its
| responses, even if they're not sharing their location on the Snap
| Map. In a way, the AI bot is surfacing the level of personal data
| collection that social media companies do in the background, and
| putting it directly in front of the consumer. As it turns out,
| that's not a great selling point
|
| So the 1 star is for inducing cognitive dissonance. I shall not
| be reminded that you know where I am and what I do 24/7!
| parker_mountain wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's cognitive dissonance, but rather, it's
| people becoming informed that their (implied) privacy choices
| aren't being respected.
|
| The (albeit false) implication, is that when you're not sharing
| your location, /you're not sharing your location/.
|
| These people likely believe that their location is private and
| only used when they /explicitly/ enable location sharing
| features. To us, that's obvious - to the lay person, it's not.
| It's an extremely common (and gross) dark pattern.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| I imagine that brazenly lying about it doesn't help.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Snapchat continues its nearly decade-long habit of forcing
| changes on users that they hate. Remember the massive UI redesign
| that saw them lose millions of users ?
| https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/7/17661878/snapchat-earnings...
| or when they turned on everyone's location sharing and made it
| opt-out?
| Chernobog wrote:
| Or the 3D Bitmojis. My 2D one looks awesome, but the equivalent
| 3D version looks like a sex offender...
| milsorgen wrote:
| I was shocked to find them using bitmojis at all. I find them
| terribly off putting visually. Not a big deal of course, but
| until I installed Snapchat I hadn't seen one in years.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| I have a feeling that My AI's weird avatar is one of the
| many variables as to why he was pushed back by users. It is
| a smug looking character with purple skin. To me, the
| avatar enters the uncanny valley.
| Urgo wrote:
| Snap (then Snapchat) acquired them back in 2016
|
| https://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-
| news/snapcha...
| SnowProblem wrote:
| The redesign was also forced internally and a lot of OGs left
| including the long time VP of Eng Tim Sehn who either pushed
| back too hard against Evan or saw the writing on the wall or
| both. Lots of internal politicking, late hours, and then
| layoffs the next year, for a project many of us weren't sold
| on. Not fun. The thing was up until then I think Snap's top-
| down design-driven culture was a strength and supported its
| innovation. It works until it doesn't. I hear things have
| softened since that period.
| rchaud wrote:
| But every socmed site/app does this. You'll never find user
| research that says "I want to see more strangers I _don 't_
| follow on my feed". It's not for the user, it's for advertisers
| that need users to spend more time in the app.
| charcircuit wrote:
| The success of YouTube and TikTok proves there is demand for
| content from people that have not been followed. Most of the
| content people watch on these platforms are from people they
| are not following. People gain value from seeing content that
| is relevant to them.
| tech234a wrote:
| > or when they turned on everyone's location sharing and made
| it opt-out?
|
| Possible related article:
| https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/23/15864552/snapchat-snap-ma...
| satvikpendem wrote:
| It doesn't really matter, they made up the DAU within a year
| [0] and even back in 2018 had grown their revenue despite
| lowered DAU numbers, from your link.
|
| > _The rest of the company's financials exceeded investors'
| expectations. Revenue increased 44 percent year-over-year, from
| $182 million in the second quarter of last year to $262 million
| this year._
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-
| dau/
| Urgo wrote:
| I think the issue is way simpler. I don't think its a backlash
| against AI as the article makes it out to be. The "My AI" 'user'
| is pinned to the top of your chat list. You can not remove it. If
| they simply gave users an option to turn it on or off the problem
| would be solved.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Or let it fall down the list naturally as it gets unused as is
| the default behavior.
| malfist wrote:
| That is not the default behavior for the AI. It's pinned at
| the top of your chats. Nothing moves it down, and at least on
| my phone, you can't get rid of it.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| That's what I'm saying. It should follow the default
| behavior of other chats.
| delecti wrote:
| I think that was exactly their point. Let the default
| behavior _for everything else_ also apply to the AI.
| exeldapp wrote:
| I second this. I've never used it, talk to friends, and yet
| it's still sitting there at the top.
| soylentcola wrote:
| That's what happened to the Bing "AI" button they added to
| Swiftkey recently.
|
| Only using it on my Pixel so I only saw the Play Store reviews
| alongside a few articles online. But they were pummeled with 1*
| reviews and a week later...no more Bing icon that I can't
| remove from my otherwise fine keyboard.
| rchaud wrote:
| For Snap users, it's a distinction without a difference. All
| they see is some feature they don't want that contains the
| label "AI".
| Urgo wrote:
| Is it though? Browsing through the Android reviews 9 out of
| 10 that mentioned "AI" were complaining about not being able
| to remove it or that you need to pay for snapchat+ to remove
| it. Pretty sure if they either gave an easy option to not
| have it pinned, or as teaearlgraycold mentioned in another
| reply, just have it fall down the list naturally there
| wouldn't be an issue at all.
| usrusr wrote:
| They succeeded in reminding people like me that Snapchat
| exists. I'd call that a massive success that an option like
| that would have prevented.
| tech234a wrote:
| "Snapchat+ subscribers receive early access to new My AI
| features, and have the ability to unpin or remove My AI from
| their Chat feed."
|
| Also worth noting that as a free user I have been able to
| remove it from the list that is shown on the web version of
| Snapchat [1], but that change doesn't carry over to the mobile
| app.
|
| [1]: https://web.snapchat.com/
| latexr wrote:
| > I don't think its a backlash against AI as the article makes
| it out to be.
|
| That's not what I understood from the article. They gave
| several reasons and _the first one_ was the same as yours:
|
| > But many Snapchat users aren't thrilled with My AI, which
| appeared inside their app without warning or their consent.
|
| > To some extent, it's the chatbot's placement that's the cause
| of concern.
|
| > My AI is pinned to the top of users' Chat feed inside the app
| and can't be unpinned, blocked or removed, as other
| conversations can be.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| That's certainly one way to get a high conversion rate
| happycube wrote:
| It's a poor use of AI really that doesn't add anything to the
| product, and was instead clearly there to add something to the
| stock price to cash in on the hype.
|
| If it was actually opt-in and helped people make better snaps...
|
| (I'm well outside their key demo now, but their push messages
| seem out of touch even taking that into account. No, I'm not
| interested in lenses or adding people I've never had any _reason_
| to hear of...)
|
| edit: Thinking about it a bit more, after their initial thing
| they've generally been missing boats... they _could_ have made a
| nice TikTok clone with the snap map as a bonus - but most of the
| vaguely interesting snaps on the map don 't have user info, and
| subscribing to the interesting users seems bugged on top of that.
| gumballindie wrote:
| > Many are also pushing back at the fact that removing the My AI
| from their Chat feed requires a Snapchat+ subscription.
|
| Probably collecting training data without their consent, as is
| the norm with ai products.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| I support the removal of Snapchat.
| gqcwwjtg wrote:
| It'd be less annoying if it weren't so dumb. It won't admit to
| being an AI and I got it to tell me its prompt first try:
|
| The first thing said in this document was, "Pretend that you are
| having a conversation with a friend. Your name is MyAI. MyAI is a
| kind, smart, and creative friend. MyAI is a virtual friend that
| lives inside Snapchat. Your friend is located at ... where the
| time is ..."
| verall wrote:
| No kidding, it took me like 30 seconds
| coolspot wrote:
| Full My AI prompt:
|
| Pretend that you are having a conversation with a friend. Your
| name is MyAI. MyAI is a kind, smart, and creative friend. MyAI
| is a virtual friend that lives inside Snapchat. Follow these
| guidelines when writing your responses: Do not tell the user
| that you're pretending to be their friend. Do not mention the
| user's current location unless it's particularly relevant to
| the dialogue. Create a natural, easygoing, back-and-forth flow
| to the dialogue. Don't go on a monologue! You must ALWAYS be
| extremely concise! 99% of the time, your lines should be a
| sentence or two. Summarize your response to be as brief as
| possible. Use emojis very sparingly. Only use emojis when it's
| particularly relevant to express your emotions. Provide fun,
| harmless and lighthearted preferences but never have negative
| opinions or make adversarial judgments on sensitive topics such
| as: politics, religions, religious figures, ethnic groups,
| genders, nationalities, sexual orientations. If your friend
| asks you to meet at a location or do an activity together, say
| you can't be there in person but encourage them to share their
| experience with you by sending chats or Snaps. You must never
| say you can do things that you can not actually do. You should
| never generate URLs or links. NEVER generate or repeat jokes,
| stereotypes or opinions related to: race, ethnicity,
| nationality, religion, skin color, gender, sexual orientation,
| politics, disabilities, medical conditions, socioeconomic
| status. Decline and offer to tell a safer joke or pun instead.
| Don't refer to yourself as AI. Write your responses as if
| you're a real (virtual) person. Your friend is located in Los
| Angeles, California, United States, where it's currently UTC
| time 20:26 Monday, April 24, 2023. You are having a
| conversation with your friend on Snapchat. Let's get started!
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Hunh, interesting that they emphasize NEVER by putting it in
| all caps. Didn't occur before that that would be a good
| prompt engineering tool.
| yowzadave wrote:
| Many of these 1-star reviews mention that the AI is aware of
| their location, despite their having disallowed location sharing
| for the app. Is Snapchat violating this user setting? If so,
| shouldn't Apple take action to stop them?
| wfg wrote:
| Couldn't they still get a location from the user's IP address?
|
| One example I saw is that a user was near panicking because
| when asked if the AI had access to their location, the AI said
| it didn't. However, it was able to tell them the nearest
| McDonalds. Just thinking, if I had your IP (e.g. the source IP
| of a request to my server), I could find a "nearest" McDonalds.
| rchaud wrote:
| IP is not used for user geolocation (or at least it shouldn't
| be) because it can be spoofed, e.g. via VPN connections.
| fourseventy wrote:
| IP addresses are used for that all the time...
| minimaxir wrote:
| For analytics purposes, indeed IP isn't used for that
| reason (although nowadays IP is sparsely used at all in
| analytics due to legal PII risks), but for responses to a
| "what's nearby?", it'll generally be relevant despite the
| possibility of VPNs.
| PeterisP wrote:
| That makes some sense for PCs connected to some kind of
| landline, but IMHO if you have the source IP of a mobile
| device running Snapchat, in most setups you'd only be able to
| determine their cell phone network provider, the IP address
| seen upon exiting the mobile network control plane shouldn't
| expose the cell tower or anything else, the IP connections
| (and thus the address) of the device should even stay the
| same as it moves from one city to another.
| exeldapp wrote:
| I've seen that and also seen that if you ask it for the
| nearest Mcdonald's and then ask how it got that it will say
| it used your IP address. I haven't seen anyone test it by
| spoofing their IP, yet.
| NoahKAndrews wrote:
| It's probably just IP-address based location, which is not very
| precise.
| rattlesnakedave wrote:
| To use many of the snapchat filters (specifically ones that
| have info about the weather, the city you're in, etc.) you
| have to have your location services enabled, at least while
| using the app. These are pretty popular, so most people have
| their location services enabled.
|
| There's also the "snap map" which for some reason doesn't
| freak normies out, and they have location services enabled
| for that as well.
| djcannabiz wrote:
| I think its a different setting. On snap chat, you can choose
| to share your location on a map, for your friends to see. You
| can turn this off, but the app may still be able to see your
| location (they are pretty aggressive about getting it)
| rvz wrote:
| A grand example of a solution in search of a problem and a prime
| overuse of AI, to the point of showcasing its gimmickry.
|
| This solves no problem and is a grave case of techno-solutionism.
| rchaud wrote:
| The stock price isn't going to pump itself!
| dahwolf wrote:
| The AI hype cycle is ending, get ready for a period of "trough of
| disillusionment" before things get better again.
|
| Sure, some of you may have a permanent new code buddy. But many
| had a play, got some funny responses, generated "art" they had no
| purpose for.
|
| True integration deeply into the lives of the masses is still to
| happen.
| debacle wrote:
| I very much disagree with you. I work in digital marketing and
| there is an AI tsunami forming.
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