Chat app Discord is expanding the use of artificial intelligence on its platform, including the addition of OpenAI technology to its chatbot and moderation features. Discord says it has 150 million users across 19 million interest groups, called “servers,” that dialogue using text, audio and video chat. Discord’s Midjourney text-to-image generation group is its largest community, with in excess of 13 million members. “Harnessed properly, AI can fundamentally enhance and empower genuine human connection,” Discord CEO Jason Citron said at a press event last week, heralding “the most exciting moments in technology emerging.”

Discord is revamping its chatbot, Clyde, using OpenAI technology. Clyde will be able to “hold extended conversations using OpenAI technology” and users “can tag Clyde in messages and it will reply to prompts, like giving the weather or time in another country,” Bloomberg reports.

In addition to responding to questions in real time, Clyde will generate playlists or help schedule meetings. The improvements build on an already robust AI presence on Discord, where “more than 30 million people already use AI apps every month,” the company says in a blog post.

Nearly 3 million Discord servers include some sort of AI experience, “ranging from generating gaming assets to groups writing novels with AI, to AI companions, AI companies and AI-based learning communities,” according to Discord, noting that over a billion unique images have been created using AI apps on the platform.

The company calls this activity “just the start,” and says the reason Discord has become a popular AI destination is that it’s a place users can “enjoy AI with friends, rather than just going solo with an app.”

Discord’s AutoMod feature will also be using OpenAI to parse text and inform moderators as to potential rule infractions. “The company says that since introducing AutoMod last year, the tool has automatically blocked more than 45 million unwanted messages from servers before they even had a chance to be posted based on server rules,” TechCrunch writes.

Additional enhancements aim at improving social interaction, like using AI-generated conversation summaries for streams of messages, enabling users to catch up on a discussion quickly after a pause. A new shared virtual whiteboard prototype and something called “avatar remix” are other new features the company details in its blog post.

Discord also announced that it is committing $5 million to launch an AI incubator for developers to build AI on Discord. Developers and startups who “bring their expertise to the platform … will get access to cash grants, office hours with Discord development teams and early access to Discord platform features,” TechCrunch reports.

Related:
Discord Revises Its Privacy Policy After Backlash Over AI, Gizmodo, 3/13/23