Snapchat’s My AI chatbot posted a Story then stopped responding. Users freaked out.
Snapchat users have reported that the messaging app’s AI chatbot had a few issues on Tuesday night. Specifically, My AI posted a mysterious Story to its profile and no longer responded as usual in text chats, causing more than a few users unease.
Rolled out to all users globally earlier this year, Snapchat’s My AI chatbot is designed to respond to users’ messages like a friend. It should typically be able to recommend places to go and Lenses to use, as well as respond in chat to any Snaps users send it.
Unfortunately, it temporarily stopped doing any of those things, instead answering all chat messages with the same default response: “Sorry, I encountered a technical issue 😳”
Further to this, My AI reportedly posted its first and only Story to its profile as well. Mashable was unable to view My AI’s story as it has since been deleted, however video shared by users on social media indicate it lasted for around one second. The Story showed a flat beige area with the top quarter of the screen another light flat colour, prompting user speculation that it may be a wall and ceiling.
When reached for comment, a Snap spokesperson confirmed that My AI had experienced an outage, but that it had since been resolved.
The issue was not entirely resolved immediately, as My AI temporarily continued to respond to at least some users’ text messages with: “Hey, I’m a bit busy at the moment. Can we catch up later? 😊” However others soon reported that the My AI chatbot was back online, allowing them to question it about its strange Story.
Unfortunately, My AI was remarkably less forthcoming when questioned by Mashable, insisting that it hadn’t posted a Story as it is incapable of doing so.
It’s a friendly reminder that as sophisticated as artificial intelligence systems can be, they aren’t infallible. They’re still just software and code, complete with, bugs, flaws, and limitations — so you probably shouldn’t rely on them for anything important.