| Hello, it's Aisha and Alex in California. Snap has a chatbot to sell you. But first… Today's must-reads: • OpenAI made ChatGPT available to companies
• PayPal is searching for a new CEO
• YouTube will add AI-powered tools As Facebook and Twitter Inc. try to persuade people to pay for blue check marks, Snapchat has something completely different to sell: a chatbot. Snap Inc.'s new chatbot is based on the OpenAI system behind ChatGPT. The Snapchat bot, called My AI, will appear inconspicuously in a subscriber's list of friends. It can do just about anything ChatGPT can — write a poem, answer trivia questions, plan a weekend or provide a recipe. My AI began rolling out to Snapchat+ subscribers this week. It joins a bevy of quirky features that cost $4 a month, such as the ability to change the design of a chat background and customize notification sounds for friends. Snapchat+ has only been around for nine months but already shows signs of success. More than 2.5 million people pay for the service. Compare that with an estimate of fewer than 300,000 subscribers to Twitter Blue, which is supposed to be a cornerstone of Elon Musk's revenue-generating strategy. Verification badges are a key feature of Twitter and Meta Platforms Inc.'s pitch to prospective subscribers. Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are a little behind on the current chatbot hype cycle. Musk is exploring the potential for developing an anti-woke chatbot, according to a report in the Information, and Zuckerberg said Meta is forming a new team to focus on AI-driven products, without giving a clear timeline for when they'd be ready. There has so far been no indication that either will be tied to their respective company's subscription programs. Snap, as it so often is, could be a test case and perhaps an inspiration for copycats. The company popularized the disappearing messages and "stories" format that are now staples of the modern social media app. It made a bet on subscriptions before Musk even owned Twitter and before the Meta Verified program came into existence. If the bot inside Snapchat is a hit, we wouldn't be surprised to see one slide into our Twitter DMs. —Aisha Counts and Alex Barinka Corporate America can't stop talking about artificial intelligence, as companies from Meta to Home Depot are flooding earnings calls with chatter about AI. Tesla's plan to build a new plant in Monterrey is ushering in a new era for electric vehicle manufacturing in Mexico. Alphabet's driverless-vehicle unit Waymo is cutting dozens of jobs as the tech giant shifts to focus on developing artificial intelligence tools. A hydrogen plane startup is gearing up for its first test flight this week, an early step in Universal Hydrogen's long-term plan to power the next generation of aircraft with alternative energy sources. Watch: Former Tesla board member Steve Westly gives his take on Master Plan 3 and the new head of Google's CapitalG, Laela Sturdy, discusses her investment focus in these Bloomberg Technology TV interviews. Salesforce gave an optimistic forecast for the coming year as it faces heavy pressure from activist investors. | 
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