From Chat To Moderation, Discord Adds OpenAI Functions

OpenAI's technology will be incorporated into functions such as Discord's chatbot and moderation tools, among other innovations, announced Discord Inc. on Thursday.

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Discord, which was once seen as a specialized voice-chat program for gamers, has evolved into a hub for all types of text, audio, and video discussions with more than 150 million users spread among 19 million servers, or groupings based on interests. According to the firm, millions of users currently utilize AI apps on Discord each month to produce content ranging from gaming assets to collaboratively writing a novel. About 10% of new users join the network to take part in the site's numerous AI communities. With more than 13 million users, the AI text-to-image generation Discord server Midjourney has the largest community on the network.

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Chief Executive Officer Jason Citron stated at a news conference that "AI, when properly harnessed, can fundamentally enhance and strengthen genuine human connection".

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Over the past year, OpenAI products like ChatGPT, which generates human-like conversational prose from a few words of input, and DALL-E, which produces realistic visuals based on a few words, have attracted significant customer interest. Businesses have rushed to include the technology in their goods despite public blunders demonstrating how it can go wrong. 

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With the use of OpenAI technology, Discord is improving its chatbot Clyde to respond to user inquiries in real time and carry on lengthy conversations. Users can tag Clyde in messages, and it will respond to questions by providing the weather or time in a different location or suggesting a music, according to Discord. No user conversations were used to train the chatbot algorithms, the company claimed.

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Also, it is improving its AutoMod tool, which makes use of OpenAI text mining to notify moderators when potential server rules violations occur. Other changes aim to boost social interactions on the site. For instance, conversation summaries created by AI are used to group streams of information so that users may quickly rejoin a conversation after a break.

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Discord established a $5 million fund for early-stage entrepreneurs and developers last year. Discord revealed on Thursday that some of the money will go toward establishing an AI incubator and providing resources for programmers to create AI capabilities for the platform.

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In the future, according to Anjney Midha, vice president of platform ecosystem, Discord may investigate generative voice AI. Voice is seriously undervalued. I have a good feeling that in a short while, we'll be able to communicate with all of our favorite software, and the software will respond to us," said Midha. He proposed that potentially this application of AI could assist in arranging user gatherings.

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AI might one day "remove some of the irritation of going out as friends out," he claimed.