Snickers suggested “feeding” chatbots a digital candy bar whenever they make up facts or try to flatter the user. Behind the playful packaging lies a real problem: language models still make frequent mistakes, and humans have to verify their responses.
Mars launched the Hungr.AI campaign in the U.S. on August 31, according to Dexerto. It builds on the slogan “You’re not you when you’re hungry,” which Snickers has been using since 2010. Now, the brand has declared artificial intelligence to be “hungry,” and calls Hungr.AI the world’s first digital candy bar for AI.
What’s Inside the “Digital SNICKERS”
On the campaign website, users copy “Digital SNICKERS” and paste it into a conversation with ChatGPT—the brand recommends doing this in the mobile app. The page promises “clearer answers” and “sharper thinking.”
In fact, a “bar” is a text instruction—that is, a prompt. As Tom’s Guide discovered, it instructs ChatGPT to review the conversation, find the user’s last question, look at its own response, and answer again—in a more concise and to-the-point manner. Mars explains that the instruction works within the user’s session: the company doesn’t see the conversation and doesn’t run its own model.
Tom’s Guide reviewer Amanda Caswell tested the “snack” on three queries. The responses after using it were no worse—and sometimes shorter and more to the point. However, in her view, this doesn’t cure the “hallucinations”: the “snack” is just a disguised request to “check and try again.”
Why Chatbots Need a “Snack”
The campaign capitalizes on two real flaws in generative AI. The first is hallucinations, when the model confidently provides false information. The second is sycophancy, when a chatbot agrees with the user instead of correcting them. In April 2025, OpenAI even rolled back the GPT-4o update in ChatGPT because the model had become overly sycophantic, NBC News reported.
Mars does not claim that Snickers fixes AI. The answers to questions on the campaign website state: Snickers provides the tool, the language model generates the response, and users should verify the facts on their own.
“If hunger causes people to act out of character, we can have a little fun when AI starts doing the same thing.”
— explained Ashley Hill, Mars’s vice president of brands and content marketing, to LBB
The Real Snickers Bar—Only for Americans
U.S. residents aged 18 and older who participated in the campaign via Reddit or Snapchat could also receive a regular Snickers bar delivered through DoorDash. This part of the promotion was limited to 3,000 bars and ran from August 31 to September 20, so it has already ended.
The campaign was developed by the BBDO agency. Two commercials were filmed for it, in which a “hungry” AI advises people to run a marathon without training and get a tattoo in a questionable spot.
The practical lesson from this story is obvious. If a chatbot’s response seems questionable, ask it to review it, and verify the key facts using the original source.
Photo: Famartin / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
