Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge
Discord is shutting down Clyde, its experimental AI chatbot. In a support note, Discord says the chatbot will be “deactivated” at the end of the month, and that by December 1st “users will no longer be able to invoke Clyde in DMs, Group DMs or server chats.”
Discord first started testing Clyde’s AI features earlier this year, using OpenAI’s models to let the chatbot answer questions and have conversations with Discord users. It has been in limited testing ever since, and the company had planned to make it a fundamental part of its chat and communities app.
Image: Discord
The Clyde AI chatbot.
It’s not clear why Clyde is suddenly shutting down. It’s possible the chatbot may return as a paid Nitro-only feature in the future, or perhaps Discord has learned enough from its testing period and decided an AI chatbot doesn’t need to be baked into its service. We’ve reached out to Discord to comment on the closure, and we’ll update you accordingly.
Discord has been experimenting with a variety of AI features, including AI-generated conversation summaries. This allows Discord users to catch up on conversations they might have missed, particularly useful for servers that span across multiple time zones. Discord has also been trying to position its platform as home for AI developers, with funds and resources available to help developers build AI apps for Discord.