Popular VOIP communication app Discord has announced five AI features in addition to an AI incubator program dedicated to helping developers wanting to build AI apps for Discord. Three out of five features, namely an AI-powered Clyde, AutomodAI and Conversation Summaries are launching as free public experiments which two future AI features include Avatar Remix and an AI prototyping whiteboard.

Clyde, Discord’s banner bot, is now being powered by “OpenAI technology”. While we don’t know whether this is placeholder text for ChatGPT, we do know that users can talk to Clyde much like ChatGPT in any Discord channel. Clyde can also start threads, recommend playlists and access GIFs and emojis.

Discord claims that the bot is designed with a “privacy-first and optional-only approach” and while their AI features are powered by OpenAI technology, OpenAI “may not” use Discord user data to train its general models.

Clyde is bound by the platform’s privacy policy and will only access messages sent directly to it or sent in a thread created by the bot. It also doesn’t record, store or use any voice or video call data from users.

This is an image of ai clyde — *Clyde is now AI-powered. | Source: Discord*

Next up there’s an AI-based server moderation tool called AutomodAI. Server admins and moderators can use AutomodAI, which also uses OpenAI technology, to find whenever a server’s rules are broken while also accounting for the context of the conversation. The experiment begins with a limited number of servers on March 9 and is expected to come to more servers soon.

Finally, Discord can now also provide conversation summaries that bundle streams of messages into topics helping users quickly catch up on what’s going on in their servers.

The feature can be enabled in server settings and similar to AutomodAI, begins experimentation in a limited number of servers starting next week.

This is an image of discord conversation summary — *Conversation Summaries make it easy to catch up on messages. | Source: Discord*

In addition to the aforementioned AI features, Discord has also open-sourced the Avatar Remix app. Developers can find the app’s code on Github and freely fork, remix or extend it in new ways using their AI model of choice.

Additionally, the platform has also teased an AI-powered whiteboard with a text-to-image generator which can convert hand-drawn scribbles paired with a prompt into images which then stay on the whiteboard.

Last but not least, the Discord AI Incubator program has been launched to dedicate “resources to developers that want to build AI on Discord”. Interested developers can apply for grants, that come out of the platform’s first ecosystem fund and $5 million commitment to funding “strategic partners, developers and early stage start-ups to bring their creativity to Discord”.

In addition to cash grants, participants will gain access to office hours with Discord development teams, cloud compute credits and early access to new and upcoming features.

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