In a blog post released last Thursday, Announce the dispute It will introduce many new AI features in its app: Clyde, AutoMod AI, Conversation Summarizes, Avatar Remix, and more.
Powered by OpenAI technology, these new AI features offer a suite of services to Discord servers. Clyde can recommend playlists, answer questions, have extended conversations, and more. AutoMod AI will have expanded functionality, “harnessing the power of large language models” to alert rule-breaking post edits while tracking conversation context. Finally, conversation summaries will collect messages from chats to compile into a summary for those who have been away from them for a while.
Additionally, Avatar Remix, an app that “allows friends to remix each other’s avatars using the power of generative image models,” is now open source.
These and many other tools that Discord will be offering soon sound useful. But quieter changes to the privacy policy plus a deeper look at what these new tools have to offer paint a very different story. One that might lead to some serious harm to Discord users.
Privacy issues galore
Could these works also be aggregated by other AI tools, and then redirected for other purposes without credit or permission?
The biggest problem with this AI integration is the fact that it comes with very deliberate changes to Discord’s privacy policy. The previous Privacy Policy, which is still in effect March 26, 2023 (Opens in a new tab)two important statements under the “Information We Collect” section.
The first states that “We generally do not store the contents of video or audio calls or channels” and the second is “We also do not store broadcast content when you share your screen…” You can see the highlighted phrases in the screenshot below.
But upon checking out the new privacy policy, which is set to take effect on March 27, 2023 (Opens in a new tab)Both of those statements have now been erased as well as the statement claiming that “If we’re going to change this in the future (for example, to make it easier to moderate content), we will disclose this to you in advance”. You can see the affected paragraph, which is circled, in the screenshot below.
This is important because it now means that any information Discord collects is no longer protected from AI activity. Yes, I understand that the blog post has been officially edited to state that “Clyde does not record, store, or use any audio or video call data from users.” And no, that has no effect on anything.
This is because this statement is completely misleading. The preceding sentence states that “Clyde can only store and use information as described on our site privacy policy (Opens in a new tab),” which, you guessed it, redirects to the updated Privacy Policy. And this new policy contains nothing that protects your data in any way, from Clyde or any other artificial intelligence software Discord chooses to add to the service.
… The legally binding privacy policy could have been changed to reflect that, rather than just being left for a blog entry.
Here’s a reminder that blog posts or other unofficial publications have no legal weight whatsoever when they directly conflict with our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, or any other legal document created by a company. This tactic of having a company’s blog post directly contradict its own legal documents, with the intent of obscuring the true contents of said documents, has recently been implemented by Wizards of the Coast in its failed attempt to reform it. Dungeons and Dragons Open Gaming License (OGL) (Opens in a new tab).
Incidentally, this applies to AutoMod AI and conversation summarization as well, since the sole purpose of these toolkits is to collect as many messages as possible in order to carry out their functions. And who is to say what is being done with this information?
Repercussions of loss of privacy
This has the potential to be an absolute mess for privacy for many reasons. Let me preface this by saying that under no circumstances should you write messages or show streams of you committing any criminal activity or sharing private information on Discord. This is still an open internet service, and sharing sensitive information through properly encrypted and protected sites like Signal is not bad policy.
But with this massive change to its privacy policy, Discord is now officially and very quietly declaring that anything you send, share, or upload is safe from AI assembly. Because if that’s the case, the legally binding privacy policy itself has been changed to reflect that, rather than just being left to a blog entry.
And given that many parts of the world (including the United States) strip away civil liberties, this could have dire consequences. For example, if you have discussed either having or planning certain medical procedures that have become illegal where you live through Discord, and you report it to the authorities and demand that Discord turn over any data you have collected through these AI programs, then in accordance with Discord’s own policy, you will it immediately. This now includes any data that is no longer protected by their privacy policy.
This data collection may violate your privacy in other ways. All of this new data that can now be collected from you can then be turned into data profiles and sold to third parties. This is, of course, something Discord can already do, stating that the information it collects from you can be shared with vendors and related companies for their own business interests. But now it has a much larger set of information to collect – that’s video chat, voice chat, live broadcast, and any other messages the AI tools collect.
Or what if you and your friends are watching a show or movie on Discord video streaming service, and it is through an illegal site? Now that Discord collects data from this route as well, it can share that information with the IP owners of any media you view, which falls under the “compliance with our legal obligations” section of the privacy policy. Once this information is shared, these IP holders can now track down and sue those same sites, and maybe even keep them Viewers and viewers are legally responsible (Opens in a new tab)Depending on piracy laws in their countries.
Creative business is at risk
While privacy breaches are the most egregious part of this whole ordeal, there’s another problem with one of Discord’s other new tools: the Avatar Remix app. AI tools have repeatedly come under fire for collecting artwork without permission and using it to create images under user supervision.
And quite literally, the whole point of this app – which will now be open source and therefore used more often than before – is to modify the Discord avatars uploaded into it with “generative image models”. What if your avatar is artwork drawn by yourself or someone else? Does AI pull images uploaded to Discord servers?
There is no way to know conclusively as this is reflected in Discord’s policies. All we can do is past and present experiments with other AI image tools Rampant art theft And the lack of artist protection in those cases does not set a good precedent.
This does not even cover the number of written works currently circulating on these servers. Could these works also be aggregated by other AI tools, and then redirected for other purposes without credit or permission?
Final thoughts
This has the potential to be an absolute mess for privacy for many reasons.
I really love Discord and think it is one of the most important sites out there right now. Starting from a simple voice chat service for gamers and evolving to much more, it has become an integral part of many people’s lives and a way to connect with others on a global scale.
I’m part of quite a few Discord communities myself, including several writing communities, and I even run a creative server that encourages others to share their art, writing, music, and edits with each other. But now these endeavors are at risk of being stolen, our video and audio call privacy has been stripped away. The same features that gave us the freedom to connect will now be monitored and collected.
Now, I’d love nothing more than to be wrong about this. If this turns out to be a false alarm, I’ll take L in peace. But when I see how tech companies will repeatedly betray their user bases to make a quick buck, I can’t see myself being right. Especially since this isn’t the first time Discord has tried to bank — like that time when founder and CEO Jason Citron tried to push NFT integration on the platform before. Backtrack after user reaction (Opens in a new tab).
All I can advise you at this moment is to go to your privacy settings now and change them. Go to User Settings under Discord to the right of your avatar. Then hit Privacy and Security on the left-hand side and opt out of all the How We Use Your Data settings there. You can see the list in the screenshot below.
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