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You don’t want your location to be visible to your entire Snap friends list all the time, so you turned on Ghost Mode on your Snapchat. But contrary to the feature’s promise of keeping their location hidden, a new lawsuit says that Snap and My AI can still access your location even when Ghost Mode is on.[1]
The lawsuit was filed by West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey in Kanawha County Circuit Court on November 5 against Snap Inc., alleging that the company deceived parents and children about the safety of its platform while knowing that it exposed users to harmful content and sexual exploitation.
Here are more details about the lawsuit, the data Snapchat collects, its My AI, and how you can keep your children safe.
The lawsuit alleges that Snapchat’s Ghost Mode doesn’t work as promised. Ghost Mode is a feature that hides a user’s location from their friends. However, even when Ghost Mode is turned on, My AI can still access the account’s location.
Moreover, even though Snapchat’s privacy policy says that it doesn't share private conversations with service providers, the lawsuit alleges that children’s conversations with My AI are sent to OpenAI, while their contents are shared with Microsoft Advertising so that more accurate, targeted ads can be shown inside chatbot replies.
My AI is Snapchat’s in-app chatbot, which the lawsuit alleges was launched in 2023 without adequate testing. A study reported by The Washington Post found that the chatbot advised a user who said they were 15 years old on how to hide the smell of marijuana and alcohol.
In another example, My AI offered tips to a user who said she was 12 on how to make her first sexual encounter “romantic” when she said she was planning to meet a 31-year-old man. In some tests, the chatbot outright denied being AI and said that it was a 25-year-old man who proposed meeting a user posing as a 13-year-old.
Snapchat advertised My AI as a “personal sidekick,” allowing users to name it and customize its avatar. However, the chatbot could give children a false sense of privacy, encouraging them to share things they wouldn’t tell their parents.
We’ve already seen how chatbots are being used as therapists, financial advisors, and relationship experts. The more a child treats My AI like a friend, the more they tell it, and the lawsuit argues that Snap designed it to be treated exactly that way. This information is not privileged and could be used in legal proceedings or, if exposed in a data breach, exploited by attackers to carry out phishing attacks and identity theft.
The lawsuit comes one day before the first anniversary of the death of Bryce Tate, a 15-year-old student in Kanawha County who became a victim of a sextortion scam on Snapchat. The predator contacted Bryce while posing as a 17-year-old girl and shared accurate details about him to seem real.
After Bryce shared some photos, the predator began threatening him and demanded $500. Bryce offered him everything he had, every dollar: $30. But that wasn’t enough. The predator told Bryce there was no way out and pressured him to take his own life.
Adam Tate, his father, said that the predator sent around 120 messages in 20 minutes, setting a deadline for releasing the images. “This sextortion plot began on Snapchat – and we will hold the company accountable for this tragedy and the harms posed to all other kids in West Virginia,” McCuskey said in a statement.
West Virginia isn't the first state to raise these concerns. Utah sued Snap Inc. in June 2025, alleging that My AI collects location data even when Ghost Mode is on and that the company doesn’t clearly disclose OpenAI’s role in processing user data. Snapchat said at that time that My AI had been updated with additional safety and privacy protections.
Here’s what you can do to keep your child’s location safe on Snapchat.
According to the lawsuit, Snap’s CEO directed that Family Center give parents “visibility but not control.” The complaint also alleges that the company kept the feature hard to find because it worried about its effect on teen engagement.
In practice, Snapchat’s parental controls allow parents to see their child’s friend list, who they’ve messaged recently, and set content restrictions. An update in January also allows parents to see the time their child spends on the app each day and get context on how they found their friends, such as through mutual friends or phone contacts.
But Family Center doesn’t show what’s in the messages, including chats with My AI. It also has no effect on the location data Snapchat collects. Moreover, it only works if the teen agrees to link their account, so parents cannot manage their child’s Snapchat account without their knowledge.
That could change if Congress acts swiftly. The House passed the KIDS Act in June, which would require platforms to allow parents to manage privacy settings and restrict purchases. More importantly, it would also ban disappearing messages for minors, a feature Snapchat is well known for. The bill is still awaiting action in the Senate, where it faces resistance.
The lawsuit in West Virginia alleges that Snapchat’s Ghost Mode doesn’t work as promised for its My AI chatbot, which can still access a child's location even when the mode is switched on. Besides this, children’s conversations with My AI are allegedly sent to OpenAI, while their contents are shared with Microsoft Advertising for targeted advertising.
To protect your children, make sure you turn off location access at the device level, not just on Snapchat. Clear all chats with My AI and unpin the chatbot from your child’s feed. You can also use Family Center to block My AI, which would stop it from responding to your children’s questions.
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