Snapchat faces backlash over AI chatbot

Hey folks,

JPMorgan released a new report claiming the surging interest in AI, led by ChatGPT, generated $1.5 trillion in market capitalization and 45% year-to-date gain in the US stock market!

The new category of AI stocks, dubbed “LLM Innovation stocks”, includes Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, Salesforce and Nvidia.

On to our today’s update:

• Snapchat faces backlash over AI Chatbot

• AI-driven music evolution

• Tools to assist with code

Reading time is 4 minutes. Let’s dive in 🤿

Snapchat faces backlash over AI Chatbot

What: Snapchat released “My AI” chatbot to 750 million users last week, but the users aren’t thrilled. A wave of one-star reviews hit the app-stores in the US, tanking Snapchat’s rating to 1.6 from 3.0!

Why: Two main reasons for the backlash:

Privacy Invasion: The AI chatbot can suggest nearby locations like restaurants and gas stations using user’s location. But when confronted on it, the chatbot straight up lies about knowing the user’s location.

Snapchat knows your location even when you aren’t sharing it on Snap Map. But now “My AI” is making users aware of it (and also lying about it).

Forced to use: “My AI” chatbot is pinned to the top of chat list, whether you like it or not. The only way to remove it is to pay $4/mo for Snapchat+.

Bottom line: There is an art to implementation of new tech for consumer facing apps. When Microsoft released an AI chatbot in Bing, users were amused to discover multiple personas of AI, including Sydney. But the key point is it wasn’t forced, rather people made a quest to find it.

Snapchat configured the AI chatbot to help users with local recommendations but also deny knowing user’s location when it clearly does. The result is a gaslighting AI chatbot (see more examples) that is pinned on top of your chat list.

Lyrics and Algorithms: The AI-Driven Music Evolution

What: AI’s ability to replicate the sound and distinct style of an artist is causing a rift in the music industry.

Last week, Universal Music Group, the largest record label, removed a fake AI-generated Drake song from music services and social media, citing copyright infringement.

On the other side of spectrum, artists like Grimes are embracing AI. Grimes took to social media, offering to split royalties 50/50 with anyone who can create a successful AI-generated song using her voice.

Why it matters: The record labels hold a firm grip over artist’s content, with top 3 record labels controlling ~70% of the music industry!

But the AI-powered tools to generate music combined with online streaming services like Spotify and SoundCloud, are emerging as an alternative way.

Tools to move away towards digital may represent the future of the music industry where artists craft their unique voices and personality to monetize their social presence and likeness, not just the content.

New Tools
Leverage AI to grow

Today’s category helps code better and faster. AI-powered tools can generate code, debug and explain it too.

• GitHub Copilot: Generate code using simple text-prompts, along with code suggestion, smart autocomplete and compatibility with multiple programming languages. (link)

• Replit Ghostwriter: Intended for code completion, generation, transformation, and in-editor search capabilities. Including chat with the AI directly in your IDE.(link)

• TabNine: Automated code completion, auto-generated tests, syntax highlighting, and integration with popular IDEs along with cloud-based version. Code Privacy  (link)

• AI Query: It enables you to interact with databases using plain English sentences, translates text to SQL queries! Also explains complex SQL simple English. (link)

• Amazon CodeWhisperer: Designed for customized real-time code suggestions, can generate code for AWS services and comes with built-in security scans. Free for developers (link)

Misc 🌎
From the corners of the Internet

• LAION, a high school teacher’s free image database is powering billion-dollar startups. (link)

• California’s ‘Delete Act’ to block data tracking and delete your data from data brokers (link)

• Hugging Face releases its own version of ChatGPT (link)

• Create personalized playlist using AI - Apple music (link), Spotify (link)