How do you handle AI responses in your Community?

Community
1

Hello everyone!

I am wonder how other community managers handle AI responses in discussion and questions type categories.

Our current policy is that the usage of AI is okay as long as you validate the response.

After seeing some responses like this for example, I am starting to think I want to create a more strict policy against AI.

Good question, I’ll help you call the Slack API to post a message to a channel. Here’s how to do it:

Basic API Request

You’ll use the chat.postMessage endpoint. Here’s a simple example using curl:

curl -X POST https://slack.com/api/chat.postMessage \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SLACK_TOKEN" \
  -d '{
    "channel": "C1234567890",
    "text": "Hello from the Slack API!"
  }'

Setup Steps

1. Get a Slack Token:

  • Go to Slack API: Applications | Slack
  • Create a new app or select an existing one
  • Navigate to “OAuth & Permissions”
  • Add the chat:write scope under “Bot Token Scopes”
  • Install/reinstall the app to your workspace
  • Copy the “Bot User OAuth Token” (starts with xoxb-)

2. Get the Channel ID:

  • Right-click on a channel in Slack → “View channel details”
  • The channel ID is at the bottom (starts with C)
  • Or use the channel name like #general

Code Examples

Python:

import requests

url = "https://slack.com/api/chat.postMessage"
headers = {
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_SLACK_TOKEN"
}
data = {
    "channel": "C1234567890",
    "text": "Hello from Python!"
}

response = requests.post(url, headers=headers, json=data)
print(response.json())

JavaScript (Node.js):

const axios = require('axios');

const url = 'https://slack.com/api/chat.postMessage';
const data = {
  channel: 'C1234567890',
  text: 'Hello from Node.js!'
};

axios.post(url, data, {
  headers: {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_SLACK_TOKEN'
  }
})
.then(response => console.log(response.data))
.catch(error => console.error(error));

Additional Options

You can enhance your message with:

  • Blocks for rich formatting
  • Attachments for structured data
  • Thread replies using thread_ts
  • Mentions like <@U12345678>

Would you like help with any specific programming language or more advanced message formatting?

Cheers, {user}!

While this may solve the problem, I could have asked AI myself to get this response. While the issue is not widespread yet I am concerned that we are losing the personality of each individual in the community. The great thing about community are the people in it and their unique ideas, thoughts, experiences and words.

Very curious on how other communities handle this! Please share your thoughts!

3 Likes
2

My policy is don’t use AI to write or edit forum posts. Something like: we want to hear what you have to say, not what the AI has to say. It’s okay to paste in some AI text and then comment about what the AI wrote as long as you disclose that it’s AI above the AI content, for example:

“I asked ChatGPT about ___ and it said ___. Here’s what I think about what ChatGPT wrote.”

I carefully guard the quality of the content. I think that AI-generated content from 2025 will look dated in 10 years, kind of like how old movie effects don’t look passable any more.

If people are asking questions and AI is answering, why would they go to a forum instead of just asking ChatGPT? I think the main value in forums in the future is that you will be able to get answers from humans instead of bots.

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3

Great points @j127,

This is kinda where we were leaning towards as long as there’s context and the users words around the AI content.

I don’t want to look around in a few months and just see perfectly written AI responses everywhere in our forums so trying to get ahead of it now. Bring back the spelling mistakes :slight_smile:

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4

Here is one point to mindful of: discouraging such practices might drive potential new users away. A possible work around is to create a category for such and then just let them put the content there. This way the user feels they have contributed something of value, others can link to it if needed in other parts of the forum and users that are not interested in the AI post can skip the category and all of the links.

The posting of AI on user forums will be here going forward. I don’t see any norms for this within the next few years; similar to the question of the use of AI in formal education.

However with the new wave of AI, LLMs and diffusion, the only constant is change so my reply on this is not to be seen as something carved in stone or something that I might even agree with in the future.

1 Like