In a weblog submit printed earlier at the moment, Discord—a communications platform, and nothing extra—introduced plans to introduce what they name “AI” (however which ought to extra precisely be referred to as “machine studying”) to the service’s moderation, assist and chat.
The submit, referred to as DISCORD IS YOUR PLACE FOR AI WITH FRIENDS, is stuffed with cheery imagery and guarantees about how “AI” goes to make all the pieces simpler for anybody utilizing Discord, whether or not they’re chatting with pals or making an attempt to reasonable a gaggle.
Why is Discord turning into the house for AI? Easy: on Discord you may get pleasure from AI with pals. Relatively than simply going solo with an app, you and your folks can see what types of thrilling, wild and generally foolish outcomes come from prompts like “robo-hamster caught in cardboard field, renaissance portray.”
No thanks! AI-generated imagery is, as we’ve mentioned continuously, constructed on the bones of uncredited and uncompensated human artwork, and plans to implement a kind of ChatGPT performance—which is rife with severe factual errors—to Discord conversations appears untimely at finest.
The distinction between Discord’s optimistic presentation and response to the information itself couldn’t be starker. Replies under the announcement Tweet are almost universally negative, with customers shortly realising that handing the keys to so many options over to machine studying is a menace to the privateness, accuracy and legitimacy of communications on the platform.
G/O Media could get a fee
“Will there be an choose out button for server homeowners who don’t want to have their server grow to be coaching materials for machine studying?”, asks one person, whereas most others are merely as many variations of a “nah” picture meme as you’ll find on the web in 2023.
“Ah sure, ‘sharing AI experiences,’ exactly what I’m on Discord for, my mistake for pondering I used to be there to spend time with my pals, community, and meet new individuals”, says one other.
They even handle to fuck up the one good announcement amongst all of it, with information of a “shared whiteboard” characteristic—one thing individuals have wished ceaselessly—spoiled by the very fact it is going to come saddled with “an AI-powered text-to-image generator you may iterate and experiment with collectively”.
Firms, I promise you, you don’t want to do that. I do know you might be compelled to by means of the irresistible forces of capitalist inertia, the necessity to make all the pieces develop on a regular basis, however like, it is a chat program. It doesn’t want any of this crap in it. We’re actually solely utilizing Discord for one factor: to speak to individuals.