There has been an outbreak of sushi terrorism in Japan! There are over 20,000 Japanese sushi...
Snapchat launched an OpenAI powered chatbot to all their users exactly a week ago. Their users are in open revolt, both posting tons of negative reviews on social media and review bombing Snapchat with one star reviews on the app store.
In Q4, only 35% of #Snapchat reviews were one star. Last week, 75% of reviews were one star! This is both a branding and UX disaster. Why?
The three most common complaints:
1. Snapchat's My AI was forced on users, badly
2. Users have to pay for Snapchat+ to opt out of My AI
3. The My AI chatbot is both creepy and internally inconsistent
It's worth digging into these pain points a little so we can learn the right way to release an #AI powered feature. My optimistic way of looking at this is that Snapchat gave us all a huge group of beta testers willing to clearly share their feedback in user stories posted on TikTok. Check out the TikTok I've embedded here or the hashtags #snapchatmyai #aisnapchat & #aibotok to see for yourself.
1. How Snapchat failed the My AI launch
Snap's users complain the most that the new feature was not opt-in and is a permanently pinned tab at the top of the interface. Not being opt-in is a huge problem because users go to Snapchat for their friends, not for AI or search. ChatGPT and Google users wouldn't mind a new AI tab because they are already there for AI or search. Adding this without opt-in is just as clumsy as #Google adding a permanent Snapchat modal to Google search.
My AI is also the second permanently pinned tab, after the other branded "Team Snapchat" chats tab. This means of the four tabs you can pin to the top of the snapchat interface, two are from Snapchat and permanent. This would be like four of the top eight friends on MySpace being permanent and Tom's friends, not yours. It violates the implied social contract of Snapchat, this is for you to communicate your friends.
2. Users have to pay to opt-out
Only users who pay $3.99 a month for Snapchat+ can opt-out of My AI at the moment. This is infuriating Snapchat's pretty sophisticated user base who already know Snapchat is supported by ads and data mining. They feel like Snapchat is now also selling them to #OpenAI.
Really, this is like someone heard the old expression, "if you aren't paying for the product, you are the product," and made it their #UX ethos. Just like the ongoing Twitter blue check mark wars show it feels really bad to have to pay to opt-out of a feature that was forced upon you.
3. Snapchat's OpenAI implementation is weird in a bad way
Users are reporting two major complaints about the My AI behavior. It seems to know user's locations even if they have app level or phone level location tracking turned off. For savvy digital natives this is extremely painful, especially since Snapchat users with location tracking off are asking the My AI bot what it can do and it's nonchalantly saying it can recommend things to do near [their city].
On top of the perceived location leaking, the bot is being very inconsistent. Lots of people are getting it to do something and then refuse to do the same thing again. My favorite instance is in the TikTok video from ariel_kc that's linked to this post. She has My AI help her write a song to explain the chatbot's feelings to people. Right after My AI gives her lyrics and piano notes for a melody it tells her it doesn't have the ability to write music or lyrics!
So how do you avoid user backlash when releasing an AI feature?
1. Either make your AI feature Opt-in or position it as an upgrade
2. Allow Opt-out or gives users a perceived level of control
3. Provide useful, consistent deliverables like ChatGPT
My favorite Snapchat user feedback, it wrote me a song and then told me it can't write music: https://www.tiktok.com/@ariel_kc/video/7225060277996326187
