The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office issued Snap Inc., the maker of the Snapchat app, with a preliminary enforcement notice over the company’s generative artificial intelligence chatbot.
The notice cited Snap’s potential failure to properly assess privacy risks from its My AI chatbot, the watchdog said in a statement on Friday. If a final notice is issued, the social media platform might be forced to stop processing data in connection with the chatbot.
“The provisional findings of our investigation suggest a worrying failure by Snap to adequately identify and assess the privacy risks to children and other users before launching ‘My AI’,” Information Commissioner John Edwards said in the statement.
Snap said that it is closely reviewing the ICO’s decision.
“We are committed to protecting the privacy of our users,” a Snap spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “My AI went through a robust legal and privacy review process before being made publicly available.”
Read More: Snap Puts ‘My AI’ Chatbot to Work Tailoring Ads to Users
My AI, which calls itself the “virtual friend within Snapchat,” has helped Snap diversify its revenue stream through paid subscriptions. Snap introduced My AI to premium subscribers in the UK in February and began to offer it to all British Snapchat users in April.
The chatbot is powered by OpenAI Inc.’s ChatGPT technology and was the first such generative AI tool on a major messaging platform available in the UK.
(Updates with Snap’s comments starting in the fourth paragraph.)
