Ask HN: Is anyone using AI conversation partners?
8 rickcarlino 12 5/28/2025, 2:49:58 AM
I'm obsessed with applying LLMs to language learning software. One thing I am not-so-obsessed with is a wave of conversational chat apps that many startups have begun offering. Having tried them myself, I find them to be quite bland ("Tell me about your day!" ) and often use a speech style that uses direct translation of English phrases into the target language.
I see plenty of potential for LLMs in this space, but the conversation bots I have seen so far are too open-ended and seem half baked.
For users: Is anyone finding these tools helpful?
For the people building them: Are people actually returning to the product?
It was overly ambitious for the foundational models at the time, even more so for any small enough for local use prior to quantization, but I think any premier reasoning model today would work well enough.
Do I find these tools helpful?
How would a bot that has no impact on the world itself be useful? The only thing it could affect would be me. Which is less useful than everything non-bot that I can talk to (i.e. people), since people can both impact the world and affect me anyway.