It works quite well for Dutch (a relatively small language) both in speech recognition and responses. Well done! It’s a cool project. Lots of people here like to nitpick but I’m sure this wasn’t easy.
Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
201–210 of 354 posts
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#202First, I’d like to say I really love this product. Thanks for making this. Second, where are the companies that are doing this type of thing for NPC dialogue in games. Imagine playing Mass Effect or Skyrim but where you get to ask whatever and the NPC responds with something that fits within the space of possible answers based on the prompt that defined their existence.
From what I read (on /r/gamedesign, /r/proceduralgeneration and Gamasutra) it's about control. The AAA studies leave nothing to chance when it is about the game play. Once "AI" speech comes to a level where the NPC will only answer with pre-sanctioned content they might jump onto the band wagon ... but seeing that it is very much possible to generate porn with "censored" stable diffusion ... we won't see "free" AIs i…
I've worked in game development (AAA and large indie games) for almost eight years and I would generally take the narratives on game subreddits with a healthy helping of salt. They're largely speculative and uninformed. Gamasutra is better, but often game journalism is full of simplifications and rough analogies.
The main problem with this type of content is that it needs to be solid enough that it adds to the experience. If you're allowed to have a conversation with any NPC you need to keep track of what they know, their responses need to be consistent with the world, and the time to generate the response needs to be reasonable.
Old RPGs such as The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall used to allow you to go up to any of thousands of NPCs and ask them about anything! And practically all the results were uninspiring cookie-cutter replies either saying they don't know or relaying some vague common knowledge on the subject. For me it lost its novelty very quickly. In Dwarf Fortress you can play Adventure Mode and go to any randomly generated NPC to talk about anything! Those NPCs are highly complex with intricate personalities, relationships, and emotional states. Their responses are... mainly the same type of response you'd get from Daggerfall. With a good helping of completely inconsistent replies. I once asked someone about another NPC, they said it was their husband. So I asked where that NPC was and they replied "I do not know who that is". Trying to talk to characters in AI Dungeon is similarly frustrating, with the added hilarity of the AI sometimes getting mixed up about who is who between you and them.
There have been a lot of experiments with more ambitious use of AI in games. The most well-known publicly disclosed failure being Oblivion's Radiant AI which was meant to be a lot more impressive than it turned out, because they had to seriously scale it down due to random irrational behaviour.
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#203It makes you create an account mid conversation? That’s a dark pattern.
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#204First, I’d like to say I really love this product. Thanks for making this. Second, where are the companies that are doing this type of thing for NPC dialogue in games. Imagine playing Mass Effect or Skyrim but where you get to ask whatever and the NPC responds with something that fits within the space of possible answers based on the prompt that defined their existence.
> where are the companies that are doing this type of thing for NPC dialogue in games.
"Event[0]"[0] is based on a great implementation of a chatbot NPC/adversary, and there's a nice video by Game Maker's Toolkit explaining how they achieved it [1].
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
What? This is a conversation partner that's available 24/7, this is the dream app for any language learner.
Seconded, I want to speak openly without fear of judgement first with the AI so when I do speak to real people I'm much more confident. I know people who are confident/shameless (a positive trait in this case) who don't mind making mistakes when speaking to real people but that's not me. My only concern is how "correct" the tool or the AI is.
You should work on your ability to act/speak in spite of the fear of making mistakes more than your skill.
It is a fundamentally important property of society. We should not be afraid to even speak. Everyone has a different reality, mistakes are often highly relative. Richness of culture (and lack of political tyranny) comes from this interaction and lack of it is almost always bad.
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#206Absolutely outstanding. Small request: for japaneese, it would be great to include a japaneese phonetic transcription of the text in western alphabet. It would help distinguish words and make it easier to learn new vocabulary..
This! I could really use more info. A phonetic transliteration for all languages (esp Mandarin and Japanese...) as well as a sort of "bouncing ball" indicating what word is being said.
This is _so cool_ for an MVP.
Perhaps in the beginning, it could even accept English speech and reply in the language of choice -- it's easier to build recognition first.
On the whole, fantastic work. I'm curious about the audio processing backend, (and if you could use some help in that area ;-).
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#207Loading screen doesn't go away in Firefox after choosing a language.
I saw that bug too, if you refresh it enough, it goes away.
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#208As someone who is studying Japanese intensely with a tutor this is absolutely perfect for me! Being able to do some speaking and listening practice instantly at any time is exactly what I need! A few feature requests: - save conversations and come back to them - history of past conversations - auto speak the sentence - larger buttons particularly for the microphone
- Noted
- Noted
- Not 100% sure what you mean with that. So, you want to automatically speak a sentence that you enter in translator? The normal messages you get from the AI, should already be spoken automatically (though I had to implement a hack on safari, b.c. you can't automatically play audio there)
- Noted
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#209This is interesting, but it's a tech solution that decreases person-to-person contact which is bad because isolation breeds hatred and anxiety. Just go talk to someone, there are so many people who want to do language exchanges. The problem with language learning is usually consistency and engagement/interest, you don't need tech. This app is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, and that creates more problems.…
Bear with me, I'm going to start with an analogous situation, and then tie it to this one. I play Go (the board game) at a fairly high level and have been participating in clubs and teaching Go for the better part of 15 years. The simplest and easiest way to get better is to play the game a lot, hopefully against someone a little bit better than you are. You don't even have to spend a ton of time on it, just play and…
You are generalising too much from one online community that has significantly different incentives because it is competitive and ranked and probably full of elitism. Have you been to any language meetups? I have. It's easy to find people. That's that.
Still, whatever, I'm obviously not everyone.
Good luck!
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#210I tried using it in Portuguese and it's cool but it seems very off, just a huge number of things that don't sound even remotely natural or idiomatic. But when I click the translate button, the English translation is a perfectly reasonable thing to say. SO... I'm highly suspecting that, behind the scenes, the "real" conversation is happening in English, and it's translating in both directions. Which is always going to…
Based on just a few exchanges in Dutch (I'm a native speaker), I'd say it's pretty good. The conversation sounds pretty natural (albeit shallow). Maybe the quality differs per language?
Yeah it's highly dependent on the language right now