Snapchat turns to Google’s Gemini to power its My AI chatbot

Snapchat, through its parent company Snap, has collaborated with Google Cloud to power its generative AI within its chatbot My AI to enhance its capabilities.

Through this partnership, My AI chatbot will take advantage of Google Gemini AI’s multimodal capabilities. This will enable the chatbot to read and understand different types of information ranging from text, audio, images, and videos.

Partnership to enhance Snapchat’s chatbot capabilities

Snap initially announced a series of new AI features for My AI chatbot, during its Snap Partner Summit last week. The highlight of the announcement was the incorporation of a Google Lens-like feature that would allow the chatbot to respond to more complex queries.

With the new feature, users can ask My AI to translate a photo of a street sign in a foreign country or ask the chatbot to choose the healthiest option on a menu.

According to Tech Crunch, users can also take pictures of a plant and ask My AI to get more details about that plant, like its name.

My AI was launched in February 2023, and then powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But Snap is now turning to Google’s AI models which will allow the chatbot to process text, images, and videos.

Following Snapchat’s integration into Gemini AI into My AI, Google revealed the chatbot experienced 2.5 times as much engagement within the US markets. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel applauded the partnership with Google.

“This partnership with Google Cloud reinforces everything that’s so important to serving our community.”

Spiegel.

“Snap is all about empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together. Now with Gemini in My AI, Snapchatters can learn so much more about the world, do it really quickly in the moment, and easily share that with friends,” added Spiegel.

Snapchat’s investments come at a cost

Snap and Google are not strangers to each other. Today’s announcement follows a partnership between the two tech firms that has lasted for over a decade.

While tech firms are racing for supremacy by leveraging AI, creating scope for investing in AI features to enhance their offerings, it also comes at a cost.

For Snapchat, there are already concerns over the potential threats that My AI may pose to users, especially to young children.

According to Tech Crunch, by making My AI smarter, the potential risks may also increase.  Late last year, the UK’s data watchdog the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) accused Snapchat of a “worrying failure” to assess the privacy risks that its AI chatbot had on users, particularly children.

The watchdog threatened to close the My AI feature in the UK following a preliminary investigation, according to a BBC News report. According to the same report, Snap was the first social media platform to adopt an AI-powered chat function earlier this year.

The app reportedly has 21 million users in the UK, many of them children with the ICO expressing concerns over potential privacy risks for children especially those between 13 and 17 years.