Evidently, Snapchat is learning the hard way that people don't appreciate platforms fiddling with their private chats, something Meta has been dealing with for years.

Last week, at its annual Partner Summit, Snapchat announced that its 'My AI' GPT-powered chatbot element was going to be rolled out to all users, expanding from being a Snapchat+ subscriber-only feature.
My AI allows you to chat with an AI entity, and it will answer your questions, with the My AI chat now pinned to the top of all user inboxes in the app.

Apparently, that hasn't been particularly appealing to everyone.

Wrote TechCrunch:

An average US App Store review of Snapchat over the last week was 1.67, with 75% reviews being one-star. Sensor Tower data reports that for Q1 2023, the Snapchat average U.S. App Store review was 3.05, with just 35% of reviews one-star.
The main problem seems that the My AI chat has been placed into their personal inbox, the space that the most active Snap users spend most of their time. That, to some, feels intrusive, and there is no way to actually remove the My AI chat from the top of your inbox display.

People are very attuned to the app; many of them use this as a social networking tool, so that is exactly why random injecting of My AI is annoying, plus people have been complaining about the AI element itself and information it has revealed about the location, personal details, etc.

But it's the placement of the option that's proved most infuriating. Which, as noted, is a challenge Meta's also been fighting for years as it looks to monetize private messaging in WhatsApp and Messenger.

Long ago, in 2016, the company did integrate Messenger Bots, which was a catalyst to nudge people to interact with brands, and other organizations within the application. It has failed thus far, although subsequent attempts to include games and other features were scorned, and ultimately abandoned in the interest of keeping things simple.
Why? Because people always want to use messengers to send messages to contacts, and rather not anything more. Ads in message streams are disturbing, and the addition of other functionalities was also seemingly perceived as an unwanted distraction from their rather private communications.
Which is some distance from China, where apps like WeChat have become a critical connector in almost all aspects of daily life. Meta, and others, have tried to translate this expanded usage to western markets, but thus far, western users have shown little inclination towards additional functionality – though WhatsApp is now increasingly being used for certain business dealings, an element that's been slowly growing over time.

But it's not a big deal yet, and certainly not in the US or other Western countries. The problem is simply that most people prefer messaging experiences to be contained within their private chats, and whatever interferes with that has typically been treated as an invasion – which we are seeing again here in the My AI feature.

Which also doesn't help out Elon Musk's 'everything app' ambitions.

Musk has spoken multiple times that he would like Twitter to become the kind of application through which one can conduct all kinds of routine activities such as paying bills or booking a ticket, etc. He believes that if payments are made accessible to a user through the application, then that will unlock a whole new world of opportunities - but as My AI demonstrates once again, users are generally resistant to functionalities that encroach on more private elements.

It doesn't mean that won't change, of course, but it's a considerable hurdle in achieving mass adoption of expanded use.

The fix in Snap's case will likely be as easy as offering users a way to unpin the My AI chat, so they don't have to look at it anymore – but the case underlines a broader challenge in shifting embedded behaviors, especially within more privacy-focused elements.