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Discord is shutting down its AI chatbot Clyde

Discord is shutting down its AI chatbot Clyde

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Discord users won’t be able to chat to Clyde from December 1st onwards.

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Illustration of Discord logo
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.

The Clyde AI chatbot.
The Clyde AI chatbot.
Image: Discord

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. Discord isn’t saying exactly why it’s shutting down, though.

“Clyde is an experiment shared with a small percentage of servers,” says Kellyn Slone, director of product communications at Discord, in a statement to The Verge. “Discord is constantly working on bringing users new features and experiences. Clyde is one iteration of this work, and we look forward to unveiling new user experiences in the future.”

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.

Update, November 17th 12PM ET: Article updated with a comment from Discord.