Artificial Intelligence has slowly become a big part of popular social media apps such as TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), Meta’s apps (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads) and Snapchat. These platforms have found innovative ways to integrate generative AI technology such as chatbots, and image generation into their apps to enhance usability and drive user engagement.
Snapchat, a messaging app for sharing pictures and videos, called snaps is also working on new ways to improve user experience with generative AI. They have developed many new features like AI Lenses, My AI, Dreams, and AI Snaps. While most of these features are fun and have measures put in place to ensure safe use, a feature known as My Selfie is raising concerns about how Snapchat handles user data.
‘My Selfie’ is a dedicated feature for selfie images that will be used to power Cameos, generative AI and various purposes on Snapchat including ads. The reason for this concern is that the app automatically allows your My Selfie data to be used in marketing unless you opt out.
This can come as a surprise to users who are not expecting their AI-generated images or their images in general to be used in an advertisement. This precisely was the case of a Reddit user who recently claimed that they were served an advertisement which was clearly an AI generated image of them. The user emphasizes that the advertisement had their face, hair, clothing and even a lamp & part of a painting on their wall in the background. Snapchat said in an email to 404 Media that it couldn’t confirm or deny whether this Reddit user was served an ad featuring their face, but if they did, the ad was not using My Selfie images.
Snapchat spokesperson Maggie Cherneff told The Verge that advertisers do not have access to Snapchatters’ Gen AI data in any capacity, including My Selfies nor do they have access to Snapchatters’ private data, including Memories, that would enable them to create an AI generated image of an individual Snapchat user.
However, Snapchat’s terms of service for the My Selfie tool do allow the company to use users’ faces in ads. While users can opt out of this by turning off a setting called “See My Selfie in Ads,” this setting is turned on by default. This could make it easy for users to skip over it and continue with the process.
Users can stop their AI selfies from being used in ads by doing the following:
Although Snapchat says that it currently does not use AI-generated images of its users for advertisements, there is still a possibility of that changing in the future. It is important for users to read and understand the terms of agreement when using products with AI features. This helps users know how their data is being used and how to protect their privacy. Also, users should opt out of functionalities that can potentially cause their data to be used without their consent. Snapchat encourages users to report ads that might be using their image without permission.
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