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Show HN: 73,530 free book summaries in 40 languages (with paid audio)

sobrief.com

11–20 of 47 posts

Re: Show HN: 73,530 free book summaries in 40 languages (with paid audio)

#11
post #7
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we used to mention AI in the title, but we removed it. we did list it on a bunch of ai directories like future pedia which does say we use ai EDIT: just added a help article saying that we use ai

So, AI. Meaning you “generated” 73k “summaries” of which you are wholly unable to verify the content of because it would require you to have read the books and listened to/read the “summaries”. What is with sloppybros and thinking quantity is more desirable than quality? What motivated you to “remove” this fact from your website? Legitimate criticism?

> Meaning you “generated” 73k “summaries” of which you are wholly unable to verify the content of because it would require you to have read the books and listened to/read the “summaries”.

No, we generate summaries on the fly, too. Why would you generate all the summaries in advance when you can summarize real-time when a user clicks on it?

> What is with sloppybros and thinking quantity is more desirable than quality?

Have you read any of our summaries? Go ahead and read a summary of a book you've actually read and let me know what it's lacking. IMO, our summaries are way more thorough than human-written counterparts. And the structure is consistent across the entire catalog. In other words, we offer both quality and quantity.

> What motivated you to “remove” this fact from your website? Legitimate criticism?

No, just a matter of branding. We thought "AI" might add a cool factor, but everyone's AI nowadays, so we're just differentiating. Also, we didn't care to buy the ".ai" domain either. Most people already know it's AI-powered without us letting them know.

Re: Show HN: 73,530 free book summaries in 40 languages (with paid audio)

#12
post #2

OP here—happy to answer any questions! We’ve been working really hard since writing the first line of code 4 months ago.

As others already clarified that it is using an LLM do you allow users to report issues with summaries? I would think this might be important.

Yeah, great point. Will add that!

Re: Show HN: 73,530 free book summaries in 40 languages (with paid audio)

#13
post #6
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which LLM is used for the book summaries and which TTS for the audio?

llm: prefer not to answer tts: open ai

How do you expect anyone to trust the summaries if you are not even going to disclose which AI model generated it?

Re: Show HN: 73,530 free book summaries in 40 languages (with paid audio)

#17
post #13
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

llm: prefer not to answer tts: open ai

How do you expect anyone to trust the summaries if you are not even going to disclose which AI model generated it?

The most common first action people take on our site is reading a summary of a book they've already read to assess its quality themselves. I don't think they care whether it was written by OpenAI or a monkey, as long as it's good.

Re: Show HN: 73,530 free book summaries in 40 languages (with paid audio)

#19

I expected the books to be public domain, but no, it's just random (?) books from many different publishers. I hope you have a good legal team...

I believe the content falls under Fair Use. More details: https://docs.sobrief.com/en/articles/9905825-is-sobrief-infr...
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