Snap hopes to use My AI chatbot interactions to personalize ads; 150M+ Snapchat users, or ~20% of MAUs, sent 10B messages to My AI since its late February debut
Context & Ripple Effects
My AI has moved fast from experiment to infrastructure: Snap launched the OpenAI-powered bot as a Plus perk in February, then expanded it to all users for free within two months, and by May was already testing sponsored links inside My AI conversations. Today's disclosure closes the loop on why Snap gave the chatbot away: 150M+ users — roughly 20% of monthly actives — have sent 10B messages to it, creating a conversational-intent dataset no other Snap surface produces.
The monetization logic was visible in advance, and so was the risk: the free rollout triggered a spike of 1-star App Store reviews from users unhappy with My AI's placement. Using those same conversations to target ads raises the stakes on that friction, while the eventual arrival of AI Sponsored Snaps shows where this data-to-ad pipeline was always headed.
First-order effects
- Snap's ad team gains a first-party intent signal built from 10B user messages, letting it target Snapchat ads off what users explicitly ask My AI rather than inferred behavior alone.
- Advertisers buying Snap inventory get a new conversational-data segment immediately, while the ~20% of MAUs chatting with My AI become the population whose chats inform what they see elsewhere in the app.
Second-order effects
- The sponsored-links tests in My AI conversations graduate from experiment to core product line, giving brands a path from passive targeting into active placement inside the chat surface itself.
- Rival platforms with their own assistant surfaces face pressure to treat chat logs as an ad-targeting asset too, making conversational privacy posture a competitive differentiator rather than a compliance afterthought.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, free consumer AI assistants become data-collection engines first and products second — the assistant's job is to generate first-party intent data that funds the app, reshaping how social platforms price AI feature rollouts.
- Regulatory scrutiny of chat-derived ad targeting becomes likely wherever such data use touches sensitive personal disclosures, forcing platforms to draw explicit lines between service improvement and ad personalization.
The trend: Consumer apps are entering the distribution phase of AI by deploying free assistants at scale and converting the resulting conversation data into ad-targeting and monetization products.