In a weblog publish printed earlier at present, Discord—a communications platform, and nothing extra—introduced plans to introduce what they name “AI” (however which ought to extra precisely be known as “machine studying”) to the service’s moderation, help and chat.
The publish, known as DISCORD IS YOUR PLACE FOR AI WITH FRIENDS, is stuffed with cheery imagery and guarantees about how “AI” goes to make the whole lot simpler for anybody utilizing Discord, whether or not they’re chatting with pals or making an attempt to average a gaggle.
Why is Discord changing into the house for AI? Easy: on Discord you’ll be able to take pleasure in AI with pals. Relatively than simply going solo with an app, you and your mates can see what kinds of thrilling, wild and typically foolish outcomes come from prompts like “robo-hamster caught in cardboard field, renaissance portray.”
No thanks! AI-generated imagery is, as we’ve mentioned steadily, constructed on the bones of uncredited and uncompensated human artwork, and plans to implement a type of ChatGPT performance—which is rife with severe factual errors—to Discord conversations appears untimely at greatest.
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 rapidly realising that handing the keys to so many options over to machine studying is a risk to the privateness, accuracy and legitimacy of communications on the platform.
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“Will there be an choose out button for server house owners who don’t want to have their server change into coaching materials for machine studying?”, asks one consumer, whereas most others are merely as many variations of a “nah” picture meme as yow will discover on the web in 2023.
“Ah sure, ‘sharing AI experiences,’ exactly what I’m on Discord for, my mistake for considering I used to be there to spend time with my pals, community, and meet new folks”, 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 folks have needed ceaselessly—spoiled by the actual fact it should come saddled with “an AI-powered text-to-image generator you’ll be able to iterate and experiment with collectively”.
Corporations, I promise you, you don’t want to do that. I do know you might be compelled to by way of the irresistible forces of capitalist inertia, the necessity to make the whole lot develop on a regular basis, however like, this can be 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 folks.
