Surprise, Discord is partnering with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT throughout the app. There’s a chatbot, obviously, but the company also plans to use machine learning in a handful of more novel and potentially useful ways. Starting next week, the company will begin rolling out a public experiment that will augment Clyde, the built-in bot Discord employs to notify users of errors and respond to their slash commands, with conversational capabilities. Judging from the demo it showed off, Discord envisions people turning to Clyde for information they would have obtained from Google in the past. For instance, you might ask the chatbot for the local time in the place where someone on your server lives to decide if it would be appropriate to message them. You can invoke Clyde at any time, including in private conversations among your friends, by typing @Clyde.

Discord

Discord is quick to note Clyde is programmed not to bother you and your friends. Admins can also disable the chatbot if they don’t want to use the feature on their server. The first time you activate Clyde, Discord will display an opt-in prompt. For users worried about privacy, Anjney Midha, Discord’s head of platform ecosystem, told Engadget the company is not sharing user data with OpenAI to assist the startup in training its machine learning models.

Separate from Clyde, Discord is using OpenAI’s technology to enhance AutoMod, the automated content moderation tool the company introduced last June. As a refresher, server admins and moderators can configure AutoMod to automatically detect and block inappropriate messages before they’re posted by creating a list of words and phrases they don’t want to see. In the nine months since it began rolling out AutoMod, Discord says the feature has blocked more than 45 million unwanted messages.

Moving forward, the tool will use large language models to interpret and apply server rules. In practice, this should make AutoMod capable of spotting and taking action against people who attempt to go against a community’s norms and expectations. In one demo, Discord showed AutoMod taking action against someone who tried to skirt a server rule against self-promotion by writing their message in a different language. In that instance, AutoMod wasn’t preprogrammed to watch for a specific word or phrase, but it was able to use context to infer that there was a potential infraction.

Discord

According to Midha, Discord has been exploring how machine learning can improve user safety for a while. While he didn’t have early data to share on AutoMod’s new capabilities, he said the early results are “super promising,” adding he has “never seen anything like it.” The new and improved AutoMod is rolling out to select servers starting today.

If you’re the type of person who uses Discord mostly to chat with friends, chances are the upgrades to Clyde and AutoMod won’t dramatically change your experience of the app, particularly since plenty of other apps already offer ChatGPT integration. But Discord is also using OpenAI tech to power a feature that everyone should find useful: Conversation Summaries. If you’ve ever joined a large server only to immediately feel like you can’t keep up with some of its more active members, this feature promises to solve one of Discord’s longstanding pain points. When it arrives in a limited number of servers next week, the feature will begin creating bundles designed to provide you with an overview of chats you may have missed while away from the app. Each bundle will include a title, a summary of what was said and any images that were shared, as well as a log of who took part. You won’t need to endlessly scroll to try and piece together something you missed.

It can feel like Discord is just another tech firm up in the generative AI craze, but Midha wants users to know machine learning has been part of the Discord identity for a while. Every month, more than 30 million people use AI applications through the platform, and almost 3 million servers include at least one AI experience. On GitHub, many machine learning projects feature links to Discord servers, a fact Midha attributes to Discord being a natural place for those conversations to start. With its emphasis on bringing friends and communities together, the company believes it has a leg up on the competition.

Following a beta that saw just 5,000 people get a chance to use the software, Aimi’s iOS and Android app is now available to all. The release brings the company’s generative music platform to mobile, where it was not available previously. Engadget’s James Trew has been using the app since January. Since then, Aimi has made a few user interface tweaks.

What hasn’t changed is the premise of the app. As before, Aimi is built around continuous music “experiences” you can subtly tweak by interacting with a handful of interface elements. If you're familiar with platforms like Endel and Brain.fm, you probably know what you're getting into. As a free user, you can tap the thumbs-up and down buttons to guide Aimi’s algorithm. There’s also a shuffle button if a section comes on that you don’t like at all. With today’s release, Aimi will also prompt you to indicate if you want to hear a section more or less frequently, as well as for longer or shorter periods of time.

Users who pay $10 per month gain access to additional controls. First, a “Section” view allows you to isolate individual elements of a musical composition, including parts like the harmony and melody, and adjust the gain and tell Aimi whether you like what you’re hearing. An additional “Composition” interface allows you to shape what you’re hearing by adjusting a set of four sliders. For instance, by moving the “Progression” slider, you can instruct Aimi to modify the experience you’re listening to more or less often. Meanwhile, the “Intensity” and “Texture” sliders allow you to control the number of effects Aimi employs and whether a composition sounds organic or synthetic. Last but not least, there’s a self-explanatory Vocals slider.

The release of a mobile app is part of a broader plan by Aimi to bring more people into the world of generative music. Later this year, the company plans to release Aimi Studio, which will allow users to take a more hands-on approach to craft their own compositions. “One of the strengths of generative music is that we can use it to attract casual listeners with continuous music experiences and then introduce them to interactive music by letting them take ownership of their music experience,” Aimi CEO Edward Balassanian told Engadget at the start of the year. 

After a lengthy drought, Advance Wars-style strategy games are enjoying something of a resurgence. On April 21st, Nintendo will release Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp, a remake of the two Game Boy Advance games that started the series. It turns out strategy fans can also look forward to a new Wargroove title, with publisher Chucklefish announcing a sequel to the Advance Wars-inspired game from 2019.

Wargroove 2 doesn’t have a release date yet, but when the game is ready, it will be available on Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam. This time around, Robotality, a studio best known for its work on 2019’s Pathway, is handling development duties. According to the Wargroove 2’s Steam page, the sequel will feature new factions and units for players to command, as well as three single-player campaigns to complete. Chucklefish is also promising a roguelike mode. Additionally, the game will ship with an enhanced level editor that will allow players to create their own maps, cutscenes and campaigns.

If you haven’t played the original game yet, Wargroove is currently 70 percent off on Steam. That’s the largest discount Chucklefish has ever offered on the game.

With a potential US ban on the horizon, TikTok has outlined a new data policy designed to convince European lawmakers it is not a security threat. Dubbed Project Clover, the guidelines will see TikTok introduce “security gateways” governing employee access to European user information and data transfers outside of the continent. “This will add another level of control over data access,” TikTok states. As before, data requests will also need to comply with local data protection laws.

A third-party security firm will be responsible for overseeing TikTok’s new data security controls and conducting audits of the company’s data practices. The third-party will also “monitor data flows” and report incidents. TikTok said it would have more information to share about the partnership soon. The company also plans to partner with other companies to implement technologies that can augment and improve its new data policy.

According to TikTok, an internal team has been working on Project Clover since last year. The company expects to implement the changes it outlined today throughout 2023 and next year. Separately, TikTok today announced plans to open two new data centers in Ireland and Norway. Both will be operated by third parties and powered by renewable energy. The company plans to begin storing European user data locally starting this year, at an annual cost of €1.2 billion.

"We're ahead of the curve on this because we have to be – because we need to earn trust," TikTok vice-president of government relations and public policy in Europe Theo Bertram told BBC News.

The announcement comes after the European Commission, the EU’s executive wing, banned staff from installing and using TikTok on work devices. Whether the company’s new policy will be enough to prevent European lawmakers from imposing additional limits on the platform is hard to say. Project Texas, an agreement TikTok struck with Oracle to route US user traffic through the firm’s cloud infrastructure, has seemingly done little to convince American lawmakers the app is not a national security threat. Whatever course of action the US takes, it’s likely to push its allies in Europe to do the same, much like it did with Huawei.

Following the lead of Microsoft and Google, DuckDuckGo is about to dip its toes in generative AI. But the company isn’t starting with a chatbot. Instead, DuckDuckGo is partnering with OpenAI and Anthropic to enhance its existing Instant Answer feature. You won’t see “DuckAssist” with each and every search you conduct, but when it does appear, the tool will pull from Wikipedia (as well as Encyclopedia Britannica in some instances) to provide a natural language response to your questions.

DuckDuckGo is limiting DuckAssist’s sourcing to reduce the likelihood of the feature’s machine-learning model “hallucinating” or, in other words, providing you with the wrong information. If you see a magic wand icon, it means Duck Assist can summarize information for you.

Additionally, the feature won’t be part of the entire DuckDuckGo experience right away. With today’s announcement, you will only see DuckAssist answers appear when using the DuckDuckGo app or browser extension. The company says it wants to collect feedback before expanding availability in the coming weeks and allowing DuckAssist's model to pull on additional sources. For those concerned about privacy, DuckDuckGo notes no login is necessary to use DuckAssist and the company won’t share any of your personal information with OpenAI and Anthropic. DuckAssist searches also won’t be used to train their models.

DuckDuckGo users can expect more AI-enhanced features to arrive in the future. “This is the first in a series of generative AI-assisted features we hope to roll out in the coming months,” DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg said. “We wanted DuckAssist to be the first because we think it can immediately help users find answers to what they are looking for faster.”

Google's annual developer conference will return on May 10th. The search giant announced the date on Tuesday afternoon after internet users quickly solved the teaser puzzle Google shared in the morning. As with last year's conference, I/O 2023 will take place in front of a "limited live audience" at the historic Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California. Google has not held an I/O anyone can pay to attend since before the pandemic. In 2020, the conference was canceled, like many other in-person events that were scheduled to take place that year. One year later, Google held the event at its Mountain View campus, with the in-person audience mostly limited to company employees.              

The good news is that Google will publicly steam the event. I/O 2023 will open with a keynote from CEO Sundar Pichai, followed by on-demand developer sessions that will be available to watch on YouTube and the I/O website. More so than in past years, there will be a lot at stake at I/O 2023. It's likely Google will spend a significant portion of the event playing up its latest AI advances and innovations, and with good reason. The recent announcement of Bard did not go according to plan after the chatbot shared incorrect information about the James Webb Space Telescope. Google needs to show it won't be outdone by rivals like OpenAI.  

Gigi Sohn, President Biden's pick to serve as the critical fifth vote on the Federal Communications Commission, is withdrawing from her nomination to the telecom regulator. On Tuesday, Sohn said she recently asked President Biden to appoint someone else to the FCC. The Biden administration originally announced Sohn's nomination in October 2021, only for her to go on to face intense resistance from Republicans and moderate Democrats like Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Per The Washington Post, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that, as of Tuesday, the Biden administration did not have news to share on a new nominee.       

"Unfortunately, the American people are the real losers here," Sohn said in a statement. " The FCC deadlock, now over two years long, will remain so for a long time. As someone who has advocated for my entire career for affordable, accessible broadband for every American, it is ironic that the 2-2 FCC will remain sidelined at the most consequential opportunity for broadband in our lifetimes."

Developing...

Since Panic’s Playdate began shipping last spring, the handheld has offered two ways for players to install games. To start, the device comes with a seasonal lineup of free titles. These are automatically added to your Playdate’s library at a cadence of two every week for 12 weeks, for a total of 24 games during its first season. It’s also possible to sideload games purchased through marketplaces like Itch.io. Today, Panic is adding a third way to download software for your Playdate in the form of Catalog, a curated storefront of Playdate content.

At launch, there are 16 games to be found on Catalog. You can browse the storefront on your Playdate and the web. Eleven of the titles are brand new, and it looks like there are some promising gems on the list. Specifically, Grand Tour Legends looks like a standout. It’s an arcade racing game where your only job is to turn the pedals on your bike by spinning the Playdate’s signature crank. There’s more strategy involved than you might think, as you need to manage your rider’s energy levels. Another intriguing title comes in the form Carve Jr, a game where you use the Playdate’s crank to perform snowboarding tricks. At most, you can expect to pay up to $15 for a game from the storefront.

Separately, Panic is increasing the price of Playdate. Effective April 7th, the handheld will cost $199, a $20 increase from its current $179 price. The company blamed the price increase on increasing production costs. “Our manufacturing partner recently gave us the news that the cost of building a Playdate is going up,” Panic said. “And given our already tight margins, we’re at a point when we need to adjust Playdate’s price.” Panic adds it’s giving customers a month’s notice on the price increase to soften the blow caused by the move. “We don’t take this lightly: we’ve always wanted Playdate to be as affordable as possible.”

Peridot, the next game from Pokémon Go developer Niantic, will arrive on May 9th, the studio announced today. First revealed last spring, Peridot is the first original release from Niantic since it relaunched Ingress in 2018. Gameplay involves players breeding and caring for virtual pets named Dots. According to Niantic, each Dot will feature a unique appearance thanks to a system that allows them to inherit a mix of “genes” from their parents.

Pre-registrations for Peridot are now open on the App Store and Google Play Store. Players who pre-register and play the game within its first two weeks of availability will get a special party hat cosmetic for their Dots. It’s obvious Niantic has high hopes for Peridot and hopes to recapture some of the success it saw following the release of Pokémon Go in the summer of 2016. The last few years have seen the studio experience multiple setbacks. In 2021, for instance, it announced the shutdowns of both Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and Catan: World Explorers. More recently, Niantic laid off approximately 90 employees and canceled four more projects.

The National Women’s Soccer League is heading to FIFA 23. Electronic Arts announced on Monday that all 12 NWSL teams would be available to play within the game starting March 15th, thanks to a licensing partnership the company recently signed with the league and NWSL Players Association. The 12 teams of the NWSL, and all the female athletes who play on their rosters, will also be part of the franchise moving forward, including when it rebrands to EA Sports FC later this year.

FIFA 23 launched with all 24 teams from the Women’s Super League and Division 1 in the UK and France. The game also marked the first time EA featured a female player on the cover, with Chelsea’s Sam Kerr appearing on the Ulitmate Edition. All told, the series has come a long way since FIFA 16, when EA first added pro female players.

Come March 15th, all 12 NWSL teams will be available to play within FIFA 23’s Kick-Off game modes. They will also be available in the game’s Tournament Mode, as well as Online Seasons and Friendlies. If both teams are from the NWSL, EA says players will see an “authentic” match broadcast experience. Separately, the company is adding the option to play through the UEFA Women’s Champions League (UWCL) in Kick-Off and Tournament game modes. It’s also adding four new European clubs, including Juventus and Real Madrid, to round out the UWCL experience.

“The athletes that call the NWSL home are some of the best in the world and we’re excited for the opportunity to further showcase their talent through this unique gaming experience,” said NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman. “We can’t wait for fans to begin playing and we look forward to continuing this celebration of the players and the league when we kick off our 11th season on March 25.”

FIFA 23 is available on PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC.