Orange City, Iowa — A new technology on the popular app “Snapchat” might raise some concerns, or at least some eyebrows for parents.
Sioux County Sheriff Jamie Van Voorst posted on Facebook that basically it’s an artificial intelligence technology that is supposed to be able to answer many different types of questions, and usually does a pretty good job, in conversational English — similar to Chat GPT if you’ve ever used that. But the sheriff and his deputies had a few concerns. First of all, he tells us you can’t delete “My AI” from your Snapchat without paying a subscription. Plus, he says you can rename “My AI” to anything you want. And Van Voorst says that means that if parents are checking on their kid’s device, the kid may have changed the name of the AI to one of their friend’s names, so it wouldn’t even look suspicious to the parent. He says there’s another issue with that as well.
He says another concern is that the bot may give advice that is inconsistent with the family’s values, or just straight-up wrong, and completely opposite of advice the parent or another trusted adult would give.
He says there are other concerns from a school standpoint too.
He says everyone parents differently, but they just wanted parents to be aware that it’s out there.
