Snapchat’s Spiegel Shifts Focus to AI After Reviving Ad Business

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Snap Inc. Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel said he's investing more aggressively in bringing artificial intelligence and machine learning to Snapchat to make it more interesting for its users, the next major shift after years spent overhauling its advertising business.

“There was a recognition that we'd fallen behind the curve on the machine learning side, which, to some degree, was reflected in the business performance,” Spiegel said in an interview. “We needed to improve there and bring together some of our most senior machine learning folks to just talk about what it would look like for us to get to state of the art and really invest.”

Being able to spend more time on fun improvements — like making the content on the Snapchat app more personalized or building artificial reality filters and software — has been a hard-earned accomplishment for Spiegel. His company has been grappling with monumental shifts in how people use social media apps and what kind of digital ads marketers want to buy on them. He spent much of his time the last few years overseeing the revamp of Snapchat's money-making advertising business, making big changes that are finally showing signs they're working.

In 2021, the Snapchat experience revolved around messaging and Stories from friends and camera filters that spiced up posts. For advertisers, it was largely about telling brands' stories that stirred emotions, not so much campaigning for immediate purchases. Snap needed to evolve its app for both of those important groups, a change that would require new technology, expensive infrastructure and a reshaped organization.

Now, the company is funneling money into building machine learning, AI and augmented reality features that play into Snap's ads business and user feeds. Instead of building it all in-house like peers at Alphabet Inc. or Meta Platforms Inc., Snap is working with big tech partners like Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet's Google for cloud partnerships, freeing it up to work