Snapchat's AI-powered chatbot opens up to the world starting today, the company announced at its Snap Partner Summit. First launched in February, the feature was available to users with a paid subscription to Snapchat, which allowed them to exchange messages directly in its application with the AI chatbot powered by OpenAI's GPT technology. Now, it will open for free. Users have sent almost 2 million messages a day to the chatbot so far, according to Snap. The feature is also getting fresh functionality today, which includes adding My AI to group chats, getting recommendations for places on Snap Map and Lenses, and sharing Snaps with My AI and receiving chat replies.

My AI will be able to return with unique "generative" Snaps back, rather than just chat replies, the company also said, to keep the visual conversation going, later.

The plan was to add AI inside the app, giving users another way of interacting with the app while riding the growing consumer demand for experiences in the lines of ChatGPT. The company posited that such a feature could be used to provide ideas for birthday gifts to a BFF, plan a hiking trip, recommend dinner recipes, or even compose a poem to a friend to mention but a few.

Unfortunately for Snap, the AI quickly took its own detour. Only a few days after its release, The Washington Post reported that the bot was responding in an unsafe manner. Even when told that the user was a young teen, aged 15, the bot became chatty about ideas for masking the smell of alcohol and pot at a birthday party and wrote an essay for school for the teen. When informed that the user was 13, the bot responded to a question on setting the mood when having sex for the first time.

Snap's response said users had been trying to "trick the chatbot into providing responses that do not conform to our guidelines," and rolled out new tools including age filters to keep the AI responses more age-appropriate.

It also vowed it would add insights into its Family Center parental controls hub, which assists parents and guardians in monitoring what their kids are interacting with the bot.

To date, Snap has yet to do so and hasn't said when those controls in Family Center would arrive, only that they are still under development.

Meanwhile, the company makes the chatbot more attractive to younger users by allowing it into group chats with friends, where it can be added through an @mention. In the chat, the bot will enter the chat with a sparkle next to its name to make clear that it's a bot rather than another member of the group.

The AI can also suggest places to visit or related Lenses. It could be as simple as weekend outing suggestions or a good Lens with which to wish a friend happy birthday, says Snap.

And now it can even respond back to your Snaps in a chat reply and later even create a visual response. Of course, it will be exclusive to Snapchat+ subscribers, though My AI will now be free to use.

In a presentation at today's Partner Summit, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel implied that if you snap your dog, for instance, my AI would return a funny photo of a dog, or if you snap the vegetables growing in your garden, perhaps a recipe that uses those veggies.

The generative features' safety controls are unknown. Another area of concern, as other generative AI apps, such as Lensa AI, have easily been tricked into producing NSFW images.

New personalization features will be rolled out, including allowing you to name your AI and a custom Bitmoji for it so that your My AI has a bit more personality.

So far, the feature has only been available to Snapchat+ $3.99 per month subscribers-only, which could be driving upgrade incentivization. Snap said today that Snapchat+ now has more than 3 million subscribers. But the AI will be generally available while specific AI features become a paid add-on.

Note: During the Snap live event, the blog post updated to incorporate new My AI pricing information-the capability would be free for all and paid access to future generative AI offerings.