Snapchat's My AI outgrew its Snapchat Plus subscriber gate

The design

Snap Inc. introduced My AI on 27 February 2023, according to the company's own newsroom post of that date, which describes "a new chatbot running the latest version of OpenAI's GPT technology that we've customized for Snapchat." At launch the post is explicit that My AI was "available as an experimental feature for Snapchat+ subscribers" only, appearing inside a user's chat feed where it could recommend gift ideas, plan trips or answer questions. Snap's current support documentation, retrieved 16 September 2026, now describes My AI simply as "a chatbot currently available to Snapchatters," with no subscription qualifier, and states it is "powered by Large Language Models like GPT models from OpenAI and Gemini models from Google."

What the evidence says

A follow-up Snap post dated 4 April 2023, Early Learnings from My AI and New Safety Enhancements, states that "six weeks ago, we rolled out My AI" and that the company had "started slowly by providing My AI to Snapchat+ subscribers", confirming that, more than a month after launch, the subscriber gate was still Snap's own description of the rollout. The current help-center description of broader availability is not dated to a specific day in either Snap post located for this entry; it documents where the product stands today rather than pinpointing when the Snapchat+ requirement was lifted, so this entry treats the widening as evidenced by the contrast between the 2023 posts and today's documentation rather than by a single dated announcement.

What it asks of people

My AI's placement inside the ordinary chat feed, alongside human friends, asks users to treat a chatbot as one more contact rather than a separate tool they seek out. Snap's April 2023 post reports that people asked My AI about "movies, sports, games, pets, and math", everyday conversation rather than technical queries, which suggests the design succeeded at making the bot feel like a low-stakes presence in a space otherwise reserved for people the user already knows.

Privacy and safeguards

Snap's April 2023 post states plainly that "all messages with My AI will be retained unless you delete them" and that the company treats this conversational data differently from messages between friends because it can be used "to continue to make My AI more fun, useful, and safer." The same post reports that a review of flagged interactions found "only 0.01% of My AI's responses were deemed non-conforming" against categories including violence, sexual content and hate speech, a company-reported figure from its own internal review, not an independent audit.

• Does a chatbot's placement in a friends list change how much personal detail people share with it, compared with a separate app?
• What does "retained unless you delete them" mean for how long a conversation actually persists on Snap's servers?
• When was the subscription requirement actually lifted, and does Snap date that change anywhere in its own materials?

Snap's own record is precise about My AI's February 2023 launch and its Snapchat+-only start; it is comparatively vague about exactly when and how the feature reached the broader user base the current help pages now describe.