I’ve had some requests recently for seemingly different features including more grammar information and a list of synonyms. The thing in common is that they require generative AI, and I thought that maybe the best thing for me to do was to let you experiment with your own AI prompts. So I’ve added a new feature I’m calling Ask AI which lets you dig deeper into the words and phrases you click on.
How to enable
This is for premium users only and for now you need to enable it here on the Settings page:
You can use it for prompts related to the word or phrase which is currently being explained. For example, here I’m asking it to explain the conjugation of the verb I clicked on:
I’ve found for sentence translation you can ask it to translate in a natural manner (make it sound like native English) or a literal manner (capture as much nuance as possible). In my case, I am starting to prefer literal translations because they make for better spaced repetition flash cards. Less often I find the natural translations to be better, such as for translation of idioms.
Another useful prompt I’ve found is asking the AI to downgrade the word choice: “Re-write this passage so that it is suitable for a B2 level language learner”. When reading advanced texts, I will read this version before proceeding to the original text.
How can I refer in the prompt to the context (paragraph, sentence, whole text) in which the word was used?, is it possible?, is the context somehow already embedded in the prompt?
Is it possible to see the prompt that currently powers the explain feature?, I think that prompt does a great job!, and in experimenting with this new feature, it could be helpful to start with that very powerful baseline, and tweak my way forward from it.
ok, just feedback, no criticism at all, …, it does not seem to be working right now. I tried a few times and it shows “Fetching…”, but never completes.
The context and the word you clicked on are embedded in the prompt. Here’s an example of the prompt for a Spanish learner learning the word “casa” within the sentence, “Hola, me gusta tu casa”:
You are helping a Spanish learner to understand the word "casa" within the following context:
> Hola, me gusta tu casa
Respond to the learner who says: $USER_PROMPT_GOES_HERE
But these are trade secrets! … just kidding, haha, here you go, again for the same example:
> Hola, me gusta tu casa
What does the Spanish word "casa" mean in English? (Explain the usual meaning as well as the meaning in this context)
(the prompt is a bit different if you are asking for the explanation in your target language, but it turns out most people including myself prefer it in English)
Hmmm, I wonder if it might be because I was deploying a change. Please try again and let me know if it’s still broken. If it is please send me some details (a screenshot showing your whole screen with the context would be handy) so that I can investigate
yeah, in hindsight, question 2 reads like a naive spy trying to get trade secrets! … well done for me!, haha
but joking aside, my use case, or what I had in mind was something like this:
I really like the default output of explain, and since my German-level doesn’t suck so much (still sucks after so many years, but, …, Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache), I tried the explanations in German. Most of the time that’s fine for me, but sometimes the beautiful German language bites me and I need to resort to explanations in English, or even in my mother tongue (Spanish). So I thought it would be great to have explanations generated in the three languages in the first place (presented in that order, German, English, Spanish). So I thought I just need to tweak the default prompt to show me the very same output, in the different languages.
I’ll try again later today and if it does not work, I’ll send you some more details.
But perhaps some service on which Readlang relies on, may be down. Because I also tried to import a new web page into Readlang using the Chrome extension (which usually works), and it also keeps “Saving …” ad-infinitum
@Eduardo Sorry about that. I think I see what went wrong. Please can you refresh and then give it another try.
You could totally use this new Ask AI feature to request an explanation in Spanish (the catch is that it won’t be saved and integrated with the rest of Readlang like the explanations are though, these Ask AI responses are ephemeral for the moment).
Really good idea Steve! Loving it so far! Can’t wait to play around with the prompts. It will be exciting to see what this feature can look like with a few updates in the future.
Hi Steve, that a great feature, thanks for working on this.
Are you really planning to leave users to ask everything they want or this is just for experimentation in order to get some ideas about how people use this and then restrict it so specific prompts? The way it is now it is just amazing.
Can you also clarify what it the exact context that is passed to the AI?
I used “explain the grammar of the sentence” and “rewrite the whole passage to A2” and both worked fine.
What would be the correct words to used to that AI knows what we are referring to?
I don’t see this option in Word List menu, can you make it available there as well?
It would be great if you could make synonyms generated by AI have hyperlink to be added to synonyms (as is the case in explain feature).
Also, unrelated to AI but the new blitz exercise doesn’t show synonyms of the word while practicing / giving correct answer… Maybe you should check it out…
It’s great feature btw Thank you very much. Keep it up!
True, I’ll think about adding that with the next round of improvements.
I agree that would be nice, but then maybe it should be a separate feature from these freeform “Ask AI” requests. I’ll think about it. In the meantime, hopefully copying and pasting the synonyms isn’t too much work.
Will look into that the week after next! (I’m away on holiday next week)
I tried later that day and it was working, and it is a really nice feature. Well done
It would be great if the user could also save some custom prompts that could be run with just one click. By playing with this, I found myself trying a few different prompts several times. Prompt engineering is kind of an art, and after the user has crafted a nice prompt -which could be rather lengthy- it would be just great to have it ready-to-go in the app, and not rely on memory or copy/paste to execute the very same prompt for a new word. Just an idea!
It’s only available in the Explain sidebar and the Edit/Explain view of the new practice session for now. I’ll definitely consider adding it in the other locations if it seems that people are finding it useful.
I do find the feature useful but most often edit my words from the Word list and/or during Classic Flashcards practice, so for now I don’t have much opportunity to use it. During reading, I am usually satisfied with getting a rough translation, and it’s during practice that all the questions come up: is a word I’ve confused it with is a synonym? what is the dictionary form (lemma) of this word form? is it a form of a noun or a derived adverb?
… just kidding, haha, here you go, again for the same example:
… well done for me!, haha
Thank you very much. Keep it up! 