An Explainer – My AI and Location Sharing

Last week we announced that My AI, our AI-powered chatbot, is rolling out to our Snapchat community. It’s been exciting to watch Snapchatters’ early reactions, and we’re grateful for their feedback to further improve My AI. We wanted to clarify the ways that My AI may use Snapchatters' location information.

It’s important to know that My AI does not collect any new location information from Snapchatters. As detailed in our support page, the chatbot only has access to a Snapchatter’s location if they’ve already granted permissions to Snapchat (which also makes it possible to share their location on Snap Map). To offer more transparency for our community, our team has made updates to My AI that clarify when it is aware of a Snapchatter’s location, and when it isn’t.  

Location-Sharing on Snapchat

Privacy is a foundational value for us — it is critical to our core use case of helping people visually communicate with their friends and family. Across our app, we seek to minimize the amount of data we collect and aim to be as transparent as possible with our community about how each of our products uses their data.

For all Snapchatters, precise location-sharing is off by default, and Snapchat can only ever access your location if you consent to share it. Sharing your location with Snapchat may be used to improve the Snapchat experience with geographically relevant features like Lenses, search, and even ads.

Our Snap Map offers users the option to selectively choose to share their location with their existing friends, but not with contacts who they are not already mutually friends with on Snapchat.

How this applies to My AI

When a Snapchatter uses My AI for the first time, they receive a notice explaining that it may use information they share with Snapchat to personalize responses. My AI shares personalized location recommendations with you in response to your requests only if you’re sharing your location information with Snapchat. 

If you do choose to share your location with Snapchat, My AI has the ability to use Snapchat’s knowledge of where you are and the places around you to provide useful place recommendations to you when asked. For example — if you have shared your location with Snapchat and ask My AI, “What are good Italian restaurants near me?,” it can return suggestions nearby from the Snap Map. 

If Snapchatters stop sharing their location with Snapchat, it may take a little time for this to take effect in My AI. We encourage Snapchatters to continue to share feedback with us about My AI and to report any inaccurate responses to our teams — so we can keep working to make My AI more accurate, fun, and useful.