If you’re an avid Snapchat user, you might have noticed a feature called ‘My Selfie’ appear on the app.
My Selfie is Snapchat’s answer to an increasingly curated ad market. It’s designed to incorporate your likeness into novel images for cameos, AI Snaps and, controversially, advertisements.
“My Selfie is a one-stop shop for your selfie images that will be used to power Cameos, Generative AI, and other experiences on Snapchat, including ads.” – Snapchat
Here’s what you need to know about the latest feature.
The Features That My Selfie Is Used For
Snapchat cameos allow you to star in short, looping videos that can be sent in chat. Snapchat provides hundreds of different options – from birthday messages to ostrich racing. If your friend has also created a My Selfie you can create cameos that feature the both of you. While Snapchat cameos are not a new feature, My Selfie creates an undertone much like Bitmoji or Apple Stickers – generating novelty (albeit often strange), gif-style content of your likeness to send to your friends, stored in a personal library.
Similar to Cameos is ‘Dreams’, which uses generative AI to create images in ‘fantastical scenarios’ – including wacky hairstyles, anime characters, and historical figures. Dreams feel surprisingly advanced compared to Cameos, providing a heavily guided version of AI image generation tools within Snapchat. Indeed, users must create a My Selfie before using Dreams or Cameo.
While Dreams and Cameos can be fun to use, some users are left wondering about their overall purpose.
A New Level of Personalised Ads
Ads are about to get even more personal. By creating a My Selfie, you are automatically allowing Snapchat to use it for ads. This means you could soon see your own face featured in ads tailored for you; showcasing products you’ve never tried.
“You also acknowledge and agree that by using My Selfie, you (or your likeness) may also appear in personalized sponsored content and ads that will be visible only to you and that includes branding or other advertising content of Snap or its business partners without compensation to you.” – Snapchat
It’s also worth noting that services offering similar features to Dreams (like CapCut) require a premium subscription, while Snapchat has made theirs available to everyone. This may sound appealing in theory, however, the complementary nature of My Selfie-powered features is something to be wary of; as the saying goes, if something is free, you are likely the product.
Of course, we’ve always had to give up something in exchange for online services; search history, locations and interactions are already utilised by tech firms for profit. But this isn’t enough anymore: our likeness must be exploited too. Is this something we want to become commonplace?
Whether you agree or not, Snapchat likely won’t be the last to integrate this feature into an app – we expect more platforms to follow suit as they continue to compete for revenue. Some, like Snapchat, may enable your likeness by default once you agree to their terms.
But it isn’t completely out of your control. Here’s how to disable the use of My Selfie for ads from Snapchat.
How to Opt-Out of My Selfie Usage for Ads
To check if you have My Selfie enabled, select your profile in the top-left corner of Snapchat, tap the settings cog in the top-right corner and choose My Selfie. Now you should be able to customise your My Selfie experience using the toggles – including removing it from ads.
While Snapchat has said it does not share My Selfie data with third-party advertisers, we recommend you keep an eye out for other services introducing My Selfie equivalents who may sell your likeness to third parties in the future.
“Advertisers do not have access to Snapchatters’ Gen AI data in any capacity, including My Selfies nor do they have access to Snapchatters’ private data, including Memories, that would enable them to create an AI generated image of an individual Snapchatter.” – Maggie Cherneff, Snapchat
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