Discord launches AI-focused features for collaboration

Discord has announced plans to give its users more AI-powered tools to be use with friends. While some tools will roll out today, it’s clear that AI is seen as a long term investment for the platform.

Discord’s first wave of AI tools will focus on quality of life improvements. These will be tested on a limited number of servers with plans to release to the wider public afterwards.

Discord’s native chat bot Clyde will be brought to artificial life using OpenAI technology. Users will be able to ask Clyde questions and have extended conversations with the bot. The platform is also supercharging its AutoMod to help take some of the (manual) load off of moderating servers. OpenAI will be used to help refine flags based on the context of the conversation. Finally, Discord is making it easier to catch up on threads you missed with AI-generated conversation summaries.

The Discord also teased features it plans to bring to users down the road.

To date, users have created more than 1 billion unique images through AI apps on Discord. Midjourney’s server is the biggest on the platform, with more than 13 million members. To put a social spin on image generation, Discord is providing open source code to Avatar Remix. This tool allows users to remix others’ avatars via AI.

Doubling down further on its social-meets-AI niche, Discord is launching a shared real time whiteboarding space with built in AI text-to-image generation. This will be a crowd pleaser as its one of the most requested features of all time according to Anjney Midha, VP of platform ecosystem. The AI powered image generation is a nice touch, but this feature will help Discord compete with some of its more business-focused competitors like Slack.

Discord’s AI-powered future

According to the company, more than 30 million people already use AI apps on Discord every month. Almost 3 million servers include an AI experience and the company estimates nearly 10% of new users are joining to access these AI tools.

As a result, it makes sense that Discord is doubling down on becoming the home for social AI. According to CEO Jason Citron, the company is steering towards turning the platform into a place where millions can easily engage with AI together. As such, the company is investing in innovation.

Last year, Discord committed $5 million to funding strategic developers and early stage start ups to bring them to the platform. Starting today, the company is launching an AI incubator as a part of that fund. Developers can earn grants and access to additional resources to build their AI projects for the platform.