Discord has arguably become the top community platform online in the last several years, rocketing from niche popularity among gamers to a social hub for anyone looking to connect. However, the company has begun to take a new direction when it comes to AI and some fans are taking issue with the company’s methods.
In an update on March 9, Discord put out an update that would introduce “AI experiments” like a chatbot, automatic moderators, and conversation summaries.
While this would be okay as a new experience, users aren’t getting these new tools for free—They’ll be trained through the user’s text, voice, and video chats in the app. As expected, many are taking issue with this.
One user who went viral instructs users on how to turn off the recording features, which players are opted in to automatically. You have to go into Settings to turn it off, with some claiming that resetting Discord caused the setting to be re-enabled.
The fact Discord sprung this change on users without warning and automatically opts them in isn’t the best look. If the company is really that desperate for research, it should ask users if they’d be willing to help by requesting permission when the user logs in.
This has caused concern among the many communities that use the app to organize their work or communities, with some occupations worried their work is going to be used by the AI. Writing out potential ideas may be tracked by the service thanks to these new features, only to be reused later by learning programs.
Other communities, including artists, are claiming they should find a new place to share NDAs or other documents since Discord will be rolling back its Terms of Service regarding this program. The person also states that people should consider stopping paying for the Nitro subscription in lieu of these new developments.
Some seem to speculate that this is Discord following the latest trend, as AI has recently become a popular topic to talk about in recent months.
Many have alluded to when Discord considered getting involved with NFTs, but they eventually backed off that. The AI stuff is just as annoying to fans, it seems, so we may see Discord scale back the integration of AI and how much user data it uses.
For now, those who don’t want to have their messages and other interactions on Discord recorded by AI should follow the steps shown in the first tweet above. This will keep you from being able to accept Drops in Discord servers, but you can always briefly turn it back on when you want one.
Update March 13 10:45am CT: A Discord spokesperson has provided the following statement to Dot Esports:
“There has not been a change in Discord’s position on how we store or record the contents of video or voice channels. We recognize that when we recently issued adjusted language in our Privacy Policy, we inadvertently caused confusion among our users. To be clear, nothing has changed and we have reinserted the language back into our Privacy Policy, along with some additional clarifying information.
As a standard practice, Discord does not store or record the contents of video or voice channels. If our policy ever changes, we will disclose that to our users in advance of any implementation.
Discord is committed to protecting the privacy and data of our users. The recently-announced AI features use OpenAI technology. That said, OpenAI may not use Discord user data to train its general models. Like other Discord products, these features can only store and use information as described in our Privacy Policy, and they do not record, store, or use any voice or video call content from users.”
