Discord introduces ‘AI’ stuff nobody asked for or needs

In a blog post published earlier today, Discord – a communication platform, and nothing more— announced plans to introduce what they call “AI” (but what should be more accurately referred to as “machine learning”.) for moderation, support and chat of the service.

The post, called DISCORD IS YOUR PLACE FOR AI WITH FRIENDS, full of happy images, promises how “AI” will make everything easier for anyone using Discord, whether they’re chatting with friends or trying to moderate a group.

Why is Discord becoming the home for AI? Very simple: On Discord you can enjoy AI with friends. Rather than just going it alone with an app, you and your friends can see what exciting, wild, and sometimes silly results come from prompts like “Robo-hamster trapped in cardboard box, Renaissance painting.”

No thank you! AI-generated images, as we’ve discussed many times, are built on the bones of uncredited and uncompensated human artand plans to implement some sort of ChatGPT functionality—which is widespread with serious factual errors– on Discord conversations seems premature at best.

The contrast between Discord’s upbeat presentation and the reaction to the news itself couldn’t be greater. Responses under the announcement tweet are almost consistently negativewith users quickly realizing that handing over to machine learning is the key to so many features a threat to privacyAccuracy and legitimacy of communications on the platform.

“Will there be an opt-out button for server owners who don’t want their server to become machine learning training material?” asks one user, while most others are just as many variations of a “close” image meme as you are Find 2023 on the internet.

“Ah yes ‘sharing AI experiences’ which is exactly what I’m on Discord for, my mistake thinking I’m there to hang out with my friends, socialize and meet new people,” says another.

They even manage to screw up the one good announcement among them all with news of a “collective whiteboard” feature – something people have been asking for forever– spoiled by the fact that it will come with “an AI-powered text-to-image generator for you to iterate and experiment with together.”

Businesses, I promise you don’t have to do this. I know that the irresistible forces of capitalist inertia are compelling you to keep growing, but this is a chat program. It doesn’t need any of that crap in there. We literally only use Discord for one thing: to talk People.