(Discord.py) Make my Bot only Respond to DM's

Question

So I managed to get the basics of my Bot working which is good. However, when I try and send a message, for example execute /ping, the bot replies to it regardless of what Channel the command is executed in, including DMs! I then programmed a statement which made it only respond to commands in certain Discord Channels on the server, and this does appear to work. However, when I try to change the channels array to discord.DMChannel, this does not appear to work. Could someone help me fix this?

channels = ["general"]
if str(message.channel) in channels:
    if message.content == "/ping":
        await message.channel.send("Pong")

But if I change it to this:

channels = [discord.DMChannel]
if str(message.channel) in channels:
    if message.content == "/ping":
        await message.channel.send("Pong")

The bot does not respond to DMChannel messages.

Answer 1

You could try setting bot intents, but keep in mind these affect the entire bot, not just one command

...

my_intents = discord.Intents.default()
my_intents.guild_messages = False # turn off messages from guilds, so you only get messages from DM channels
# optionally turn on members or presences here if you need them
client = discord.Client(..., intents=my_intents) # or discord.Bot() or whatever

...

Answer 2

You can simply do

await ctx.author.send 

It will only send the respond in dms. It can also be used in channels but it will send the respond in dms.