Why is everyone freaking out and deleting My AI on Snapchat? Snapchat’s scary AI story post explained

Snapchat users are becoming increasingly concerned since the release of the ‘My AI’ feature, after the app’s artificial intelligence bot posted a “scary” image to users’ story all by itself.

Snapchat’s My AI feature was made accessible to all users on April 19 after previously only being made exclusive to Snapchat+ subscribers. 

The artificial intelligence feature is powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology, which allows users to talk to an AI chatbot as well as send photos and receive AI-generated images in return.

Users have since reported that My AI uploaded an image to its own story. Many users have been left freaked out after discovering this was captured and posted without their consent. 

Many have since gone to social media outlets to post screenshots and provide their reactions, but what exactly happened?

What did My AI post on Snapchat?

On August 15, posts flooded in sharing their own experiences and screenshots showing what had been posted to their My AI’s story on Snapchat.

Did Snapchat Ai just add a picture of my wall/ceiling to their Snapchat story?

Snapchat AI – Left

My wall/ceiling- Right pic.twitter.com/bh8I3Aiwun

— Matt Esparza (@matthewesp) August 16, 2023

The same image was posted to every bot’s story, which featured a two-toned generated image that various people mistook for a photo of their own actual ceiling, making it even scarier.

How have people reacted?

A wave of mass panic followed with many posting on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), saying that they were “freaked out” by the events.

My Snapchat AI posted a random 1 second story and isn’t replying to me AND IM FREAKED OUT

— Ryan™ (@RyanJKrul) August 16, 2023

This led to numerous people asking questions to others, if anybody else had experienced the same thing and what it was.

why did my snapchat AI just post on its story then ignore me pic.twitter.com/BXTRzOPBRj

— sully (@theonesullyy) August 16, 2023

Other users reported that it wasn’t just the story being posted automatically, but the AI bot has also been malfunctioning and repeating messages with illogical responses.

Mines being weird too pic.twitter.com/9s7fMFu4BF

— Naija Barbie™🧘🏾‍♀️ (@iwijas) August 16, 2023

When the chatbot was questioned in regards to the story it replied, “I haven’t posted anything on my story recently”, the artificial intelligence said being totally oblivious to the story posting.

Snapchat ai posted and deleted a story. I updated my app and questioned it and I’m still very confused pic.twitter.com/mqk7x9bsgp

— Naija Barbie™🧘🏾‍♀️ (@iwijas) August 16, 2023

The mysterious event continued with tweet after tweet into the night leaving everybody confused and worried, still unsure what or why the image was posted.

Snapchat responds to My AI confusion

After users repeatedly contacted Snapchat support to address their concerns, the social media giant has confirmed that the artificial intelligence feature posting to people’s stories was a: “temporary outage that’s now resolved.”

According to TechCrunch a Snapchat spokesperson has also confirmed that their AI feature currently does not have the capability to post to its own story on Snap.

Despite the issue being resolved and it being just a bug, tonnes of people are still worried about what future impacts My AI could have on their accounts.

This has led to a surge of people rushing to find out how to delete My AI on Snapchat.