It's not a bug… it's a feature. Social star Snap said it's adding an AI chatbot to its $4-a-month Snapchat+ subscription service. Dubbed “My AI,” the bot’ll be powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT, and it apparently writes haikus and recommends gift ideas. Snap warned users of My AI's "many deficiencies" and said the bot could be tricked into saying almost anything. Think: less a serious search solution, and more an entertaining app companion. But when it comes to revenue, entertainment's no plaything.
Putting an AI cherry on top… of a subscription sundae. Snapchat+ has 2M paying subscribers, and it brought in $28M after launching last year. While Snap said it eventually plans to offer My AI to all its 750M users, for now the chatbot is a differentiator for Snap's subscription biz as it looks to move away from ad-dollar dependence. Snap isn't the only ad-reliant social mammoth now offering subscriber-only perks:
- Blue it: Twitter relaunched its $8-a-month Twitter Blue in December with editable tweets and check marks. As of last month, it had about 180K subscribers.
- Veribuyed: Earlier this month Meta said it would charge users $12 a month to be verified on Facebook or Instagram.
Subscriptions need the wow factor… Charging for mundane perks on an otherwise free app is a hard sell — just look at Twitter Blue's subscriber #s. Snap's clearly hoping My AI on Snapchat+ will make its paid service a standout. With digital ad spending cooling last quarter (Meta's revenue dipped more than 4%), companies trying to make up for lost $$ with subscriptions will need compelling perks to draw in paying users.