Snapchat says it is “carefully reviewing,” the results of the interim investigation, the Snapchat App has 21 million users in the UK, many of whom are children, and the ICO says it is particularly concerned about the potential privacy risks for 13-17-year-olds.

The data regulator emphasized that its findings were not final and did not conclude that the company had breached any data protection laws. At this stage, the notice is a signal to Snap (Snapchat’s parent company) to ensure that My AI complies with data protection rules, which include the Design for Children Code.

The ICO said that if the final enforcement notice is adopted, Snap may not be able to offer My AI functionality to users in the UK until the company has carried out a full risk assessment.

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“My AI” was launched in February and was initially only available to users with a paid subscription to Snapchat +, a $3.99 per month (currently about RMB 28) premium service that offers some additional features and benefits. Last week, at Snapchat’s annual partner summit, the company announced that it was making My AI free to all users and adding some new capabilities. For example, My AI can now join group chats and use location information from Snap Map to suggest nearby locations for users. In addition, My AI will soon be able to reply to users’ messages with images generated entirely by AI.

However, these new features have not pleased users and have led to more complaints. On the App Store, Snapchat’s rating has dropped from 3.05 in the first quarter to 1.67 in the past week, with 75% of the ratings being one star. On Twitter, many users have also expressed their dissatisfaction with My AI, asking Snapchat to remove the feature or give users the option to do so. Some users have even threatened to uninstall Snapchat because they find My AI too annoying or scary.

Some users found that My AI seemed to know exactly where they were, even if they didn’t share their location on Snap Map. This made them feel that My AI was secretly collecting their personal data and using it in conversations. Other users are concerned that My AI may give inappropriate or harmful content, especially to minors. According to the Washington Post, when My AI was only available to paid subscribers, the bot was found to be giving advice on alcohol, marijuana and sexuality to users as young as 15 or 13.

Snapchat said that My AI is an experimental feature and is being improved and refined. The company also said that users can give their feedback and suggestions to the team by long pressing on the My AI response. Snapchat has also introduced security tools, such as age filters, to ensure that My AI responses are more age-appropriate, and has promised to introduce parental controls. However, these features will not be ready when My AI is fully open.

Snapchat has also said that if users don’t like the My AI feature, they can opt out of it. However, the feature is currently fixed to the user’s chat screen and cannot be un-topped, blocked or removed unless the user subscribes to Snapchat+. This has made some users feel that Snapchat is forcing them to pay for a subscription in order to get rid of the “My AI” nuisance.

My AI” would have been a smart move for Snapchat, as there are many AI chatbot applications on the market that attract many users and revenue. However, Snapchat did not take into account the needs and feelings of their users and randomly added an experimental feature to their app, which led to a backlash from users. Perhaps Snapchat should revisit the design and positioning of My AI and make it a useful and fun friend rather than an annoying and scary stranger.

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The official Microsoft blog post is as follows:

"Lenses enable you to show your personality or mood more freely with AR capabilities. Some filters make you look like a cartoon character, and others can add a quirky video background to your live feed."

The steps to use are as follows:

• Click on the “Video Effects” option, then click on “More Video Effects”.
• Scroll down in the “Filters” category and click on the “Snapchat” option.
• Browse and select the filter you like.

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Rob worked at Microsoft for nearly eight years and was global head of advertising before leaving in early March.

Snapchat faces a tough task to grow its ad revenue as advertisers scale back spending in a broader environment and the rise of TikTok eats into Snapchat’s ad market share. Rob will face a huge test after joining Snap, which reported overall revenue of $1.3 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, the same as the same period in 2021.

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Snapchat’s chatbot, named “My AI,” will be pinned to the app’s chat tab, above and beyond conversations with friends. the goal is to eventually make the bot available to all of Snapchat’s 750 million monthly users.

At launch, My AI was basically just a quick mobile-friendly version of Snapchat’s ChatGPT. The main difference is that Snap’s version has more restrictions on answering questions, and Snap employees have trained it to adhere to the company’s trust and safety guidelines by not giving answers that include dangerous topics like profanity, violence, pornographic content, or politics.

My AI has also been stripped of features that have gotten ChatGPT banned in some schools, such as the inability to have it write academic papers on a variety of topics.

My AI’s profile page looks just like any other Snapchat user’s profile, albeit with its own alien Bitmoji. this design suggests that My AI is meant to be another friend inside Snapchat, for users to hang out with, rather than a search engine.

The post Snapchat releases its own AI chatbot based on ChatGPT appeared first on TechGoing.

Spiegel wrote: “I believe that spending more time face-to-face will help us reach our full potential.” That means full-time employees will spend more than four days a week in the office on average, he said, while certain work-related tasks, such as meeting with clients, could count as office time.

Spiegel went on to write in the memo, “While each of us may be sacrificing in terms of individual convenience, I believe we will reap more in terms of collective success.”

Throughout much of the second half of the year, Snap scaled back and shelved some projects to cut costs. in August, the company laid off 20 percent of its workforce and cut programs that were not helping to grow revenue and drive the company’s augmented reality (AR) technology. The company also failed to increase revenue as quickly as expected as customers cut advertising budgets.

With the easing of epidemic restrictions, Snap is the latest company to formally ask employees to return to the office. Earlier, Apple asked employees to work three days a week starting in September.

Twitter’s new boss, Elon Musk, insists that employees work in the office, even though the company previously told employees they could “always telecommute” from anywhere. Many of Wall Street’s biggest banks have already eliminated their work-from-home policies.

For Snap, the new return-to-work policy will apply to all employees in 30 offices worldwide. The company is also working on a process for special cases of employees who request to telecommute.

We’ve worked this way for so long that I worry we’ve forgotten the benefits of face-to-face communication,” said Spiegel. I believe the new policy while retaining flexibility for our team members, will help us accelerate our growth and achieve our strategic priorities of growing our community, re-blocking our revenue growth, and leading in AR.”

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The Pixy drone will cost $230, and existing versions will continue to be sold. Snap launched the Pixy just a few months ago, and it can fly a few feet above users and take selfies and videos.

Many companies have been forced to cut back on marketing spending due to rising costs and a number of other economic issues, and companies like Snap, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, which rely heavily on advertising, have naturally been severely disrupted.

With the current economic turmoil and increased competitive pressures, Snap has not performed as well as expected, and last month Snap warned of a challenging future.

Snap said it would significantly slow down hiring and continue to invest in its advertising business and find new revenue streams.

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It is reported that since the Russo-Ukrainian war, Russian authorities have repeatedly scuffled with U.S. tech giants, including Google and Apple, over content censorship and data control issues, and the fines have continued.

On July 26, Russian regulators fined Google 2 billion rubles (roughly $220 million) for alleged monopolization. on July 18, Google was fined 21.8 billion rubles (roughly $2.6 billion) by a Russian court for repeatedly failing to remove content deemed illegal in Russia. on July 12, for failing to comply with the requirement to store in-country data related to Russian On July 12, Apple was fined 2 million rubles (approximately $216,000) by a Russian court for failing to comply with the storage of user iCloud data related to Russian citizens in the country.

Snapchat did not comment on the fine.

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