Discord is shutting down Clyde, its OpenAI-powered chat bot. Users will no longer be able to talk to Clyde in DMs, servers, or group DMs as of December 1, 2023.
First announced in March, Clyde was designed to share knowledge, play interactive games, and generally enhance the Discord user experience by fulfilling any and all requests made by users. An update to the bot's support page, quoted below, has confirmed that Clyde won't be around in 2024 and beyond.
Clyde will be deactivated at the end of the month. By December 1, 2023, users will no longer be able to invoke Clyde in DMs, Group DMs or server chats. Thank you for your support & feedback - we are constantly working on bringing you new features and experiences!
In the months since Discord's experiment went live, it's been a constant source of bizarre stories. Like most AI, Clyde was vulnerable to 'jailbreaks' that would let users prompt it into sharing all things illegal or unethical, avoiding rules entirely. Combine that fact with Discord users' relative anonymity, and it's no surprise that they were asking for napalm recipes or other devious things in their private servers.
Even when used as intended, Clyde wasn't the most reliable AI we've seen. From telling us about movies that don't exist to quoting things that members of our server never said, Discord's chatbot has become a running joke in most servers I've seen him appear in.
There's no indication that Clyde is ever coming back, in his current form or otherwise. The app is always looking to give new benefits to its Nitro subscribers, but Clyde is arguably more of a drawback in his current state.
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Discord was one of many companies that jumped on the AI hype train, and the death of Clyde could show that businesses are taking a step back - until the next big trend comes around, anyway.