AI is the future, at least on Discord.
The messaging app originally built for gamers has become the favorite online meeting destination for Gen Z, and is now rolling out a host of AI-powered features.
in an ad(Opens in a new tab) On Thursday, Discord shared what’s coming soon to the platform: an AI chatbot, an automated AI moderator, a conversation summary, an avatar remix, and a whiteboard. Some of these features begin rolling out today, March 9. Others will be released in the coming weeks and months.
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While AI jumped into the mainstream thanks to the popularity of the OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT, Discord has had an active AI community for quite some time. According to the company, third-party AI apps already on the platform already have more than 30 million monthly users. Almost 3 million servers on Discord have some element of AI built into the community.
In fact, the largest community on Discord is Midjourney, a text-to-image AI project that allows users to generate art directly from the server. Discord says that the Midjourney server has more than 13 million members.
So, with AI already being such an integral part of Discord, it seemed like only a matter of time before Discord started bringing AI directly to the platform.
AutoMod AI
Credit: Discord
The first feature to hit some Discord servers as soon as today is AutoMod AI. Discord already has an AutoMod feature, which basically automatically moderates rooms for admins based on server rules. Discord has now integrated AI powered by OpenAI into AutoMod, allowing you to search the server and contact mods when you think the rules are possibly being broken. According to Discord, AutoMod AI can also consider the context of a conversation so that, for example, users aren’t penalized for misinterpreted posts.
Clyde is a bot that Discord users may already be familiar with, and starting next week, Clyde is getting an AI update. Currently, the Clyde bot provides information such as server error messages, and also responds to timeout or ban requests from users and moderators. However, that’s pretty much all Clyde could do. Until now.
Clyde
Credit: Discord
Clyde will now be able to answer all kinds of user questions, just like the OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT. Users simply type “@Clyde” followed by their notice. Clyde will be able to obtain information and also help find specific emojis or GIFs based on a user’s description.
Another AI feature coming to Discord next week is conversation summaries. Again, the name is pretty descriptive of what it does. With users from all over the world, many Discord channels are always moving, regardless of the time of day. Conversation summaries will allow users to catch up on what they missed on a Discover server. The AI-powered feature will “group” chats into topics so users can easily read what they find most interesting.
Conversation Summaries
Credit: Discord
Starting today, developers can start playing with Avatar Remix, an open source Discord app that integrates AI art into the messaging app. Avatar Remix allows users to take another user’s avatar and change it “using the power of generative image models”. What does that mean? In the demo Discord showed to Mashable, a user could add a party hat or mustache to a friend’s avatar simply by mentioning their username and describing what changes they’d like to make.
Avatar Remix
Credit: Discord
The company is also launching an “AI incubator,” which offers support for developers building AI-powered apps on Discord.
Finally, Discord revealed a soon-to-be feature that the Discord community has requested for a long time: a whiteboard. But, of course, this won’t be just any collaborative whiteboard feature. It will be powered by AI, allowing users to collaborate on AI art generation and more.
