Discord is shutting down its AI chatbot, Clyde, in December. Given that it was introduced a little earlier this year, it’s unclear why it was shut down so early.
Clyde was announcement in March on an experimental basis. In a press presentation, Discord showed how users can invoke it in chat by typing @Clyde followed by their request. The chatbot can do everything for you, whether it’s answering a general knowledge question, offering you a tutorial, or telling you a joke.
Clyde is just one of Discord’s many AI-powered bots. It announced two others around the same time: AutoMod AI and Conversation Summaries. The first helps the platform’s overworked mods by eliminating unpleasant discussions on its servers. The latter helps you with FOMO by grouping messages together to summarize long conversations you missed.
In a recent support notethe company suddenly announced that “Clyde will be disabled at the end of the month” and that “by December 1, 2023, users will no longer be able to invoke Clyde in DMs, group DMs, or server chats.”
Discord has been one of the major platforms to join the AI-powered chatbot trend that started a few months ago when OpenAI went public published its API. Slack, Snapchat, and Microsoft are a few examples of other companies that have jumped on the AI bandwagon.
Discord, however, made it clear that Clyde was experimental. In a statement, it said it was only starting the feature on a limited number of servers so the company could “learn and iterate.”
Perhaps the company realized during Clyde’s fairly short lifespan that she wasn’t needed on the platform. Or maybe he’ll make a revamped (maybe even paid?) return.
Time will tell what Discord’s intentions are with its AI-powered chatbot. We’ve reached out to Discord for comment on the closure and will update this story as soon as we hear back.
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