Snapchat’s added another element to its ‘My AI’ chatbot experience, with the bot now able to respond to visual queries, along with text prompts, in the app.

As you can see in this example, now, when you send My AI a snap in the chat thread, it’ll respond with a related reply.

As explained by Snapchat:

“Snap My AI a picture of your pizza, OOTD, or even your furry best friend, and My AI may respond with a Snap back in reaction to what you’re doing. So, if you Snap My AI your latest grocery haul, it might recommend a recipe.” 

Visual cues are the next element being integrated into text-based generative AI tools, with ChatGPT now also able to incorporate image queries, providing more capacity to build on your inputs and get more customized, refined responses.

My AI, which is built on the same framework as ChatGPT, will now also be able to respond to the same, which will provide more ways to engage with the chat app, and build on your automated engagement.

Originally only available to Snapchat+ subscribers, Snapchat expanded access to My AI to all users back in April, as it looks to latch onto the generative AI wave, and boost its own popularity as a result.

And thus far, Snapchat says that My AI has proven popular – though it has also sparked some backlash, with users critical of the prominent placement of the My AI chat in their Snap inbox.

Still, Snapchat clearly sees opportunity in generative AI – which is also part of its in-development ‘Dreams’ option, which will enable users to generate AI dreamscapes, and place themselves into them.

Both are interesting – and as Snapchat notes, My AI has proven popular – but it still feels like we haven’t found the optimal use case for generative AI in social apps as yet.

Like, having a conversation with a bot is fun, and creating images is a novelty – but will these functions really keep users coming back, and spending more time in the app?

Maybe they will, and maybe the addition of visual cues will have a significant impact on My AI engagement, and lead to all new use cases for the option.