Discourse has launched an experimental one-click AI Summarize feature, now available across Free, Standard, Business, and Enterprise tiers without requiring a third-party LLM provider — Discourse hosts the open-weights model itself. Users can enable or disable it via the “What’s New” section, with access controls configurable in the Discourse AI plugin settings. Self-hosted users can still use Summarize but must integrate a third-party LLM via API keys as detailed here. Some users reported missing toggles, especially on Business plans, due to a rollout bug now fixed by keegan. Community feedback varies: some find it promising but hesitate to enable it on production forums without clearer controls or understanding of downsides shooj, while others note low usage despite low cost Jagster. There’s no built-in way to restrict the summarize button to specific user groups, though CSS hacks using the Groups CSS Classes component can hide it Arkshine. Regarding summarization logic, AI may prioritize top posts via the “best of” algorithm for very long topics (>60 posts) sam, but doesn’t inherently weight content by likes, trust levels, or user status — it treats all text equally unless filtered by length. The team invites feedback as they refine access controls and feature behavior.
As we aim to provide Discourse AI features to more of our customers, we are excited to announce that Discourse AI - Summarize is now available for Free, Standard, Business, and Enterprise tiers without the need for a 3rd party Large Language Model (LLM) provider.
This means Discourse is now providing a hosted open-weights LLM for customers to enable Summarize.
How do I enable Summarize?
You have the power to enable or disable Summarize at any time from the What's New section. All related customizations, such as who can generate and view summaries, are available within the Discourse AI plugin settings.
What does being an experiment mean?
This means that the AI feature is subject to change at any time, including its feature set and availability. We are using this as a means to test things out while opening the doors for more users to enjoy new features and give feedback.
Hey @patrickemin, yes this announcement is specifically for those using our Standard, Business, and Free hosting tiers. We’re providing the summarization feature for customers without the need for a 3rd party Large Language Model (LLM) provider.
That being said, if you’re self hosted, the Summarization feature is still available to you, although it will require you to setup a 3rd party LLM in the Discourse AI plugin for it to work. You’ll need to grab API keys from a provider and insert those details in the plugin settings.
Sorry for the inconvenience @jonasrosland. There was a small bug preventing the toggle from being shown when rolling this out. This should now be resolved for you.
Q: is it possible to limit use of Summarize for admins / moderators or other classes of users?
I tried this in my sandbox environment and it is super-promising. I hesitate to enable it on my production forum until I know what the downsides might be. If I enable it, it’s hard to take it away should we discover the negatives.
Does the AI give more weight to comments with more likes or to users with a higher trust level (does it even have access to this or care about this), or does it give more weight to something mentioned by multiple people? Is it just taking all text equally? How does it decide what to include in the summary or not, anyone know?
Just curious.
Sort of, when a topic gets super long (60 posts or more) we use the “best of” algorithm to find the top posts so we don’t summarize thousands of posts in extreme cases.
We don’t have a way only to show the summarize button to a specific subset of users. The following is a site setting to enable the creation of “new” summaries.
Certainly, something for us to keep in mind as we give control of access for other AI features.
For more information on Summarize check here.