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You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and you can’t use AI chatbots without having your conversations saved to a server. AI companies use these conversations to help train their AI models, and many people don’t like that. Some chatbots let you delete your data, and Snapchat My AI is one of them.
Just like other chatbots, My AI stores your conversations, and there are people who don’t like that one bit. This is why Snap, the owner of Snapchat, allows people to delete data that they have stored on the company’s servers. If you want to know more about what data is stored, how long it’s stored, and how to delete it, here’s a useful guide. We’ll talk about other ways you can manage your My AI data.
What data is stored?
When you chat with My AI, the company stores a history of those conversations on its servers. This is something that many people don’t know about. This kind of behavior isn’t all too uncommon with major companies, but there are folks who don’t like this.
My AI is meant to be like a buddy you can tell everything to, and some people do tell EVERYTHING to it. While it’s unlikely that someone’s going to steal your data and post your chats all over the internet, it’s still uneasy to know that the personal information you shared is on the internet.
How to delete your My AI chat data
When you chat with My AI, your chats are treated just like conversations with other human users on the app. They’re visible for 24 hours after they’re sent. You’re able to delete the messages individually in that window. Just hold your finger on the chat bubble you want to delete and tap on the Delete button in the popup menu. Once you’re outside of that window, the only way for you to delete those chats is to clear all of your My AI data. This process is also easy.
To clear all of your data, go to your profile by tapping on your profile picture in the viewfinder. Then, tap on the settings button in the top right corner of the screen. Scroll to the very bottom of the settings screen; the last section in the settings houses the Account Actions. Tap on the Clear My AI Data button.
When you tap on the button, you’ll see a popup appear letting you know some additional information. This option will clear all of the conversations that you had with My AI. This includes current and past conversations that you had with the chatbot.
This method is effective, but it doesn’t get rid of everything
If you clear your data, it won’t account for everything. It won’t delete mentions to My AI in conversations with other users. So, if you mentioned the bot in another conversation, you’ll need to go to that conversation and manually delete that message.
Other ways to manage My AI
Clearing the chat data is far from the only thing you can do to keep an eye on your My AI experience. There are some other things you can do that you probably didn’t know about. It’s important to know all of the ways that you can use a tool, especially ones on social media platforms; platforms that are so tied to your personal data.
Keeping My AI from looking at your Stories
AI straddles the line between innovative and invasive, as it needs tons of data (YOUR data) in order to learn. This is why it should come as no surprise that My AI, by default, has the ability to view your stories. You can’t ask it questions about your Story, however. So, this doesn’t seem to have any user-facing function. My AI could just be viewing your Story to learn more about your habits.
To disable this feature, go to your chat feed and hold your finger down on the My AI chat. In the popup, tap on the Privacy Settings button; it should have the text “My Story” under it. On the resulting popup, toggle the feature off.
After you toggle this off, you’ll see a popup appear telling you that this will change your Story visibility settings will change to Custom. This is only if your visibility was previously set to Everyone.
Deleting My AI altogether
If you’re fed up with My AI, and you want to completely get rid of it, it’s easy… but it’s not as accessible as many would like. In order to delete My AY, you’ll need to be a Snapchat+ subscriber. This is something that people had an issue with for obvious reasons. Buying Snapchat+ costs $3.99/month.
If you hop onto Snapchat+, go to My AI in your chat feed and hold your finger down on the chat. In the menu, go to the Chat Settings button and tap on Clear from chat feed. After that, My AI won’t be visible in your feed at all. For a safe bet, you’ll want to use the aforementioned steps to clear your My AI data before disabling the chatbot.
Getting My AI back
If you have a change-of-heart, and you want to bring My AI back from the dead, it’s pretty easy to do so. Go to your profile and find the Snapchat+ Management button. There, you’ll see a toggle for My AI. Turn it back on, and it will be able to access the chatbot again.
To get back your chats, go to the search screen and search for My AI in your friends list. Once you find it, just send a message, and it will be back in your feed.