Snap is already sharing plans for AI-based ads in its My AI chatbot, which it widely released last month. At its NewFronts showcase for advertisers on Tuesday, Snap said it was testing “sponsored links” in My AI, which is similar to how Microsoft has been testing ads in Bing Chat.

If a person is chatting with AI about video games, that could trigger a promoted link to related games, Snap said in an announcement ahead of its NewFronts show. Discussions about food could prompt responses with links to local restaurants and talks about travel could come with ads from hotels, and so forth. At its NewFront in Lincoln Center in New York, Snap also covered new content, new video ad formats and new creator services, including a new platform for brands to connect with Snap stars.

Related: How Snap's My AI chatbot would spice up the NewFronts

Snapchat has been racing ahead to be the first mainstream social media platform—ahead of Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, and others—to incorporate ChatGPT, the AI text generator into its services. Last month, at its partner summit, Snap launched My AI for all users, after experimenting with it as a part of the paid subscription Snap service. My AI has become an instant source of fascination, curiosity and a bit of fear among users, as people talk with the AI assistant and press the boundaries of its knowledge. After launch, reviews started pouring in, and memes were surfacing online, with users concerned about how prominent My AI appeared within the Snapchat experience. Users were also concerned about how Snap’s AI knew their location. Snap issued a public statement clarifying that My AI only knows the location information that Snap users already permitted the service to access through features such as Snap Maps.

AI features are increasingly showing up on apps and web services, and within ad platforms, since OpenAI’s ChatGPT became a household name in November. AI has long been used in advertising to target ads and manage campaigns, but the tools for content generation are now in the hands of consumers. ChatGPT creates text, and there are AI tools for video and images. Meta, Google, Microsoft and others have been more open about how AI will play into their business models.

AI’s search capabilities have been one of the first obvious advertising cases, as Snap’s new announcement suggested. The idea is that as people talk to a chatbot for recommendations, just like typing a search query, the responses could include promoted links. Snapchat also is using AI in augmented reality, helping creators generate the animated selfie filters that users put in their videos. And AI, of course, is crucial to algorithms that recommend content.

Snap’s NewFront showcase comes at a critical time for the company, as it competes for ad dollars in an increasingly crowded market. Last week, Snap reported a 7% drop year over year in total revenue to $988.6 million. Most of Snap’s revenue comes from advertising, but it does not break out ad revenue. Still, Snap is growing, now at 383 million daily users, up 15% year over year in the first quarter.

In the past year, Snap rebuilt its ad leadership, following the departure of two key executives, Jeremi Gorman and Peter Naylor. In March, Snap hired Rob Wilk to lead ad sales as the president of Americas. Wilk had been VP of Microsoft Advertising. Snap also has a new lead marketer, Colleen DeCourcy, who was hired as chief creative officer last year. DeCourcy is now the No. 1 marketing exec after Kenny Mitchell left as chief marketing officer last month. Mitchell went to Levi’s.

At its NewFront, Snap also launched what it called “first Story” ads, which take over the most prominent ad slot that appears in between friends’ video stories. Snap said the ads could reach 50 million people in the U.S., and it was testing it with Louis Vuitton, Warner Bros. Discovery, and others. Snap also is opening Spotlight ads globally. Snap launched Spotlight in 2020 as a place for short-form video that could compete with TikTok, and it started testing ads there last year.

On Tuesday, Snap also touted its longtime sports partnerships with leagues such as NFL, NBA and WNBA. And Snap announced plans for Women’s World Cup coverage this year, while U.S. soccer star Carli Lloyd appeared on the NewFront stage. Sports and social media have been mixing for years as enticements for NewFronts advertisers. This year there is a bit of a void in that category with the absence of Twitter. Twitter is not hosting a NewFront, but the platform has traditionally been known as the go-to place for real-time marketing around sports.

Lastly, Snap promoted the Snap Star Collab Studio, which brands can use to work with Snap marketing partners with expertise in the creator economy, including Studio71, Beeline by Brat TV, Influential and Whalar. The collaboration platform is powered by an API—application programming interface—which marketing partners tap into to build marketing campaigns and manage creator relationships. Snap said brands such as NYX were already making use of the collab studio.