Another day, yet another chain message.

This time, it claims that Discord has “partnered with a Generative AI company” that created a bot that they “sneak into every server”, which “scrapes art/images on the server to train their AI”.

Because the primary source of this is chain messages (that are basically chain emails 2.0), the claim is in 99% of cases complete utter bullshit.

“But Jae!”, you tell me, “how was I supposed to know?”. That’s the part where you have to do something hard: actually use your brain.

Disproving the whole scare is extremely difficult, and I’ll show that under your very eyes, right now, exclusively on this blog.

First, go on a search engine, Ecosia for instance.

Let’s see what we want to verify, we see that the company is called “Domo AI”, the platform in question is “Discord” and any kind of partnership for a company that size would be announced on a blog, right? Well, let’s input the terms “domoai discord” to get started simply.

Screenshot of Ecosia showing two search results on top of the list, the first one being an invite to a guild, the second one being a blog post by Domo AI.

Hmm, the first result seems to be an invitation to their Discord, however, would you look at that, the second one seems to be their official website with a blog post. Intriguing, isn’t it? Let’s take the initiative and click on it.

Screenshot of the full blog post by Domo AI.

Oh, wow! This seems to be right on the spot, there are even Discord screenshots, let’s start reading then.

Excerpt of the article saying that Domo was featured in the app directory.

So they got featured in Discord’s app directory huh, must mean they have a partnership. Let’s do CTRL+F and search for “partnership” then, that should pretty much answer it.

Firefox search tool with the term “partnership” highlighted, with no matches found.

Clicking the link on the top saying “Blog” brings us back to a list of posts, confirming this one is the most recent.

Goddamn, fooled again. The Discord blog must surely have something then, let’s go back to our trusty search engine, look for “Discord blog” and go there.

Hmm, I don’t seem any mentions of Domo AI on the front page, maybe if I use the search bar to look for “Domo”, it will yield some results?

Screenshot of the Discord blog showing no partnership either there.

Aw, dangit! No partnership there either.

I think it’s safe to say, concluding from the data we gathered through this very hard experiment that took us a whooping 10 minutes: the things claimed in those chain messages are utter bullshit.

  • Claim: “Discord partnered with a Generative AI company”: bullshit
  • Claim: “Discord will sneak a hidden bot on your server”: bullshit
  • Claim: “The bot will scrape any image sent in a server it’s in to train itself”: bullshit (more on that down below)

Now time for a Q&A:

  • Q: It was that easy?
  • A: Yep, I’m as surprised as you are, chief.

  • Q: So, what is Domo AI exactly if not a hidden bot?
  • A: Domo AI is a Discord app, meaning it’s a bot any user can add to their account. More than that, apps explicitly need an input to work with, they can’t just scrape anything they can. Apps also explicitly show what permissions they need when adding them to your account.
Screenshot of the Discord client showing the “Worlde” app being added and requesting permissions to create commands and send DMs to the user.
For instance, the app Wordle

  • Q: But how do I prevent people in my Discord guild from using AI stuff I don’t want?
  • A: Easy, go in the settings of the guild, to “Roles”, there go to the @everyone role, search for “app” and disable “Use External Apps”.

  • Q: But if it’s misinformation, why did the bot show up when banning it?
  • A: You can ban any bot or user without it being present in the guild. See screenshots below, this test guild is empty, only containing me, yet the ban list can have any bot when banned from a userID.
Screenshot of the Discord client showing an empty guild.
Empty guild
Hidden message from Clyde's, Discord moderation bot, saying Essembot was banned.
Yet, can ban bots from it that aren’t present (sorry Essem, just needed a test).
  • Q: What’s the issue with this? Even if it’s false, it’s better to be careful.
  • A: Here is the whole issue, trusting random sources with information such as this one, even with the best intentions is a terrible practice. All information you see, especially those massively relayed should be verified in some way. Not doing so puts you in a position where you could easily believe disinformation if shared the right way. Even if it “seems real”, take time to search for it, and verify the claims from a direct source, there are a lot of news that “seem real”, but then are completely false, this is how disinformation spreads.

  • Q: But <search engine> is rubbish, and I can’t find anything.
  • A: Scroll up this post and read again, clearly what I did flew on top of your head.

  • Q: You should be less aggressive about this.
  • A: No.

  • Q: You should STOP trying to prevent me from spreading MISINFORMATION!!! You are ANNOYING and GAY!11!!
  • A: OK.

Addendum: looking at it again, the blog post from DomoAI is dated from last September. Looking on Archive.org, there hasn’t been any other blog post since, meaning someone went back on the blog, read it, and either completely misunderstood what was written or decided to willingly spread disinformation.