Today, Snapchat explained that it may take a while for the My AI bot to notice if you stop giving your location data to the app. That means the bot keeps the location data for a while before understanding that a user has stopped sharing that information.
After Snapchat rolled out its AI-powered chatbot My AI to everyone last week, there have been tons of complaints about what it knows, especially a user’s location. The backlash following the chatbot’s wider availability led to several people leaving 1-star reviews for Snapchat.
The company said My AI knows all the information you share with Snapchat, including location. In addition, a notification is displayed at the beginning of the chat that the app will share some information with the chatbot for custom suggestions. However, Snap said the GPT-powered bot doesn’t know any additional details about you.
“It is important to note that My AI does not collect new location information from Snapchatters. As described in our support pagethe chatbot only can access a Snapchatter’s location if they have already granted permission to Snapchat (which also allows them to share their location on Snap Map),” Snap said in a blog post.
The social company explained that the bot uses the location data to give you personalized recommendations on things like restaurants around you.
It was specified on the My AI support page that the app only shares “city-level location and very general distances between you and places” for suggestions.
If you don’t want to give Snapchat your location, you can easily disable that permission by setting up both iOS and Android. Snap says disabling location data means the bot can’t make recommendations that are personalized based on your location.