[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Type (YC W23) - AI-powered document editor
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Launch HN: Type (YC W23) - AI-powered document editor
Hi HN, we're Stew and Stefan from Type (https://type.ai/). We're
building an AI-first document editor that helps you write. It's
similar to Notion, but focused on building a solid authoring
experience. Here's a general demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpK9PWo0lUw And here's a demo that
includes math and code blocks: https://type.ai/code-math-demos
There are a lot of AI writing products out now, but we've found
that most of them treat writing like a one-shot activity that
should be delegated to AI. We don't think that's the optimal way to
write. We think of great writing as the product of clear thinking,
which requires a lot of time tinkering with and refining ideas. So
we're building a user-friendly document editor that puts the author
front and center. As you write in Type, you can press cmd+k to
summon simple AI commands. Most of our commands are grounded in
familiar writing primitives (ex. "Write paragraph") and attempt to
understand the context of your document. Type supports multiple
rich block types, including code and math and our commands are able
to both interpret and output these block types. So if you're
writing an introductory essay about machine learning, for example,
you can use Type's chat feature to generate and refine equations
and code blocks you'd like to include in your document. Once you're
satisfied with what Type has generated, you can drag and insert the
block anywhere in your document (as seen in the demo video above).
We've also built a "what to write about next" feature in the
document sidebar that offers suggestions on ideas you may consider
adding to your document. We've built some editor features that
aren't AI-specific but which we think make for an enjoyable
authoring experience: (1) Type is built from the ground up to be
offline-first. This means most interactions (search, loading
documents, etc.) are instant; (2) Mobile support as installable
PWA; (3) Keyboard shortcuts for the most useful commands; (4)
Markdown copy/paste support. We designed Type to be most useful
for longer-form writing, so we encourage you to try it out in the
context of something like an essay or a technical tutorial. If you
try it out at https://type.ai, we'd love to hear what you think. We
think Type feels pretty different from other AI writing tools that
produce fairly shallow content, but would love to get your honest
feedback on whether we're hitting the mark. Each account comes
with a free allocation of AI commands, after which you can activate
a paid plan for unlimited AI usage (you can still create and access
unlimited docs on the free plan). If you'd like some additional
free credits, please just drop us a note at founders@type.ai and
we'll refill your free credits. We'd love your feedback on what
feels helpful and what feels confusing or missing. Thanks!
Author : stewfortier
Score : 123 points
Date : 2023-04-04 16:23 UTC (6 hours ago)
| dpflan wrote:
| Cool, keep building! (This isn't a feature of Microsoft 365 or
| Google docs yet?)
| Obertr wrote:
| sorry but this seems so easy to copy and not really a something
| new, we havnt seen so far.
|
| I am going to wait until smbd makes it on github for free
| moneywoes wrote:
| smbd?
| rsstack wrote:
| "somebody"
| Obertr wrote:
| * somebody. the idea is simple: gpt4 + python + reactjs +
| PSQL + 2 evenings -> working demo.
| whatch wrote:
| You probably don't need python and P(ostgres?)SQL too?
| csbartus wrote:
| Same feeling here: a simple ChatGPT prompt, masked as an
| Editor, having a Pricing page on it.
|
| I might be wrong. And I had another feeling: soon every YC
| startup will do the same thing over an over again: pick any
| idea + chatgpt + pricing
| Obertr wrote:
| Seems like their new criteria of entrance might strike the
| quality :(
|
| >52% had nothing more than an idea.
|
| https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1642566043053826048?s=52&t=.
| ..
| dpflan wrote:
| This is quite interesting, the recent launches of AI API
| wrapper companies posted on HN draw my attention. I like
| the innovation and use of the latest AI technology, but at
| the same time, I see a wrapper around an external API. Yes
| there can be more services providing LLMs, but those
| services are part of huge tech cos with established
| software and customer/user bases. The GPT-effect on the
| market is good, maybe internal reorgs will focus on UX
| improvements to integrate AI more into existing products
| (at what speed/pace...can a startup steal the thunder or
| just show what UX is needed...)
|
| Genuinely curious how this all pans out, it is an exciting
| time!
| spyder wrote:
| Yea, and I can easily imagine in the near future you don't even
| have to wait for somebody to copy these simpler "app-around-an-
| API" apps because AI models will generate the interface and the
| simpler logic for you on the fly. There will be still value in
| the human input: the ideas of the creator / prompter about what
| kind of features should the AI include, but if others too have
| access to the same app-generating AI then they can just
| generate it based on the same idea. So copying simpler apps
| will become a lot easier and you would need some complex
| feature as the core value of your app to compete with AI
| generated apps.
| Bitingo wrote:
| suggestions : https://bitingo-the-deep-neural-
| nets.hashnode.dev/federated-...
| rsstack wrote:
| I love the workflow! This is how I'm writing articles now with
| ChatGPT's GPT-4, just with less copy-pasting and all in one
| place, and fewer Markdown problems.
|
| The two things I'm missing, or didn't find how to use:
|
| 1. GPT-4 :) I know the API isn't public yet, but the reasoning
| abilities of GPT-4 are so much better that I'm having a hard time
| arguing with GPT-3.
|
| 2. I have a long prompt I give to GPT-4 (context on our product,
| writing style guidelines, text examples for style, words to
| avoid, etc.). It's about two pages long, in addition to the
| request for the specific article or paragraph I'm writing. How
| should I incorporate that into Type's UI?
|
| 3. How do I import/export a whole article, or paragraphs, as
| Markdown? EDIT: Copy-paste. Lol, simpler than I expected.
| autoconfig wrote:
| Glad you're liking it and thank you for the feedback!
|
| 1. GPT-4 is definitely on our radar and is something that we
| are planning to support as an option. There are trade-offs
| though as it's a lot slower and as people have mentioned, a lot
| more expensive.
|
| 2. You can use the built-in chat the same way you would use
| ChatGPT. With that said I know that is not the ideal way to
| achieve what you're looking for. We have some ideas around
| features that will address this specific problem. If that is
| something important to you and you'd like to chat about it feel
| free to email me and we can talk about it: stefan AT type.ai.
| alvarosevilla95 wrote:
| GPT-4 is way too expensive atm for anyone to offer it in their
| products, unless they're charging _a lot_, or are delegating to
| the user's API key. It's also very slow and unreliable for any
| production app.
| rsstack wrote:
| $29/mo is more than my ChatGPT Plus subscription, which does
| include GPT-4 :)
| rishabhjain1198 wrote:
| ChatGPT Plus GPT-4 is heavily rate-limited, as well as slow
| for this use-case. As of now.
|
| This is almost certainly operating off of <=gpt3.5-turbo.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| They could have a button "think for more time" or
| something and allow a certain number of those per day.
| This is how Wolfram Alpha works used to work, for
| example.
| hartator wrote:
| Everyone wants to generate AI content, but no one wants to read
| it.
| echelon wrote:
| Where's your evidence?
|
| AI content will surpass human content in quality and quantity.
| Moreover, it will enable vast numbers of people to do things
| they were previously unable to do due to budget, time,
| resources, depth of talent, opportunity cost, etc.
|
| Meta point: I've never seen so many smart people so bearish
| about the future. The science fiction dreams and utopias we've
| celebrated since our childhoods might actually be feasible now,
| and yet so many are wearing frowns.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| > yet so many are wearing frowns.
|
| I think the phrase "if it seems to good to be true it
| probably is" is one way (among many) to interpret the
| scepticism.
|
| I think that it's easy to jump to conclusions about the
| implications of this technology. Towards either over-optimism
| or over-pessimism.
|
| Expect the worst and welcome the best seems as good approach
| as any?
| [deleted]
| asciimov wrote:
| I am very concerned about the future of jobs and workers.
|
| Our capitalistic society is salivating at the idea of
| cheapening the cost of production by eliminating all the
| creative and generative work that workers make. The
| capitalist class doesn't care who gets hurt or what gets
| destroyed as long as they make more money.
|
| Unfortunately the people that are hurt the most are the
| middle and working class folks who use their skills to create
| things, make money, and immediately spend it. These are the
| folks that keep the whole system running by using their money
| to buy more goods.
|
| > I've never seen so many smart people so bearish about the
| future. The science fiction dreams and utopias we've
| celebrated since our childhoods might actually be feasible
| now, and yet so many are wearing frowns.
|
| As it stands we aren't heading towards utopia, we are running
| head first to a bleak dystopia; where critical thought and
| creativity is authorized only to the algorithms and
| probability machines of the wealthy and powerful. While the
| rest of us are relegated to cheap, often dangerous, labor.
|
| If we had support systems: Universal healthcare, wages,
| education, etc. I might be more supportive, but we don't
| because capitalism.
| yifanl wrote:
| It'll surpass human content in quantity by a lot almost
| definitionally and in quality probabilistically.
|
| But I'll have to read AI content on both sides of that
| probability.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| In popular music (and I mean that extremely broadly, as in most
| music, that is being sold) there is an interesting thing going
| on.
|
| Listeners don't really wants to know the truth. They don't
| really wants to know that Justin Bieber had nothing to do with
| the genesis of Sorry. They don't really want to know that most
| "live performance" videos were created in studios and filmed
| afterwards. Nobody is really interested in how music is made,
| because studio work is mostly draining, moving through the dark
| and an endurance test. Nobody wants raw and honest, because
| nobody even has any idea how that would sound.
|
| But everyone imagines they do. It's not even that information
| is well hidden. Everyone wants there to be a great story so
| much, that they are very happy to ignore the flimsiest of veils
| and just believe what they must. And the industry has always
| been happy to provide. It is the essence of stardom.
|
| I am fairly certain we are not going to notice of even care
| about how it was generated, as long as we can be made to love
| it, which will still require an entirely different set of
| skills.
| [deleted]
| paddw wrote:
| I don't see how you can ever profitably offer unlimited AI usage
| for a fixed fee.
| stewfortier wrote:
| That's definitely fair, we do think we'll eventually need to
| develop a more sophisticated pricing strategy & usage limits
| mherdeg wrote:
| The "unlimited" usage is interesting - will you be checking out
| the history of the top 10 or so users to see if anyone is using
| your text editor to train a smaller model?
| stewfortier wrote:
| We will need to develop more sophisticated pricing and
| monitoring to make sure this doesn't get abused. For now, we
| haven't noticed any nefarious usage - but that's partially just
| a function of us just being small / under the radar up until
| now.
| Giorgi wrote:
| That's just ChatGPT with extra steps
| sotu wrote:
| I've been using Type for a month now and it has really helped me.
| Its nice to just have a fully feature rich editor that is
| modernized with AI /ChatGPT too. Nice work to the team!
| stewfortier wrote:
| Glad you've been enjoying it. I'm continually surprised by how
| much more I feel I can do working with ChatGPT/AI in a doc
| editor interface versus exclusively chat (though each have
| their unique drawbacks).
| c-smile wrote:
| [A bit out of scope] I suspect that in pretty short time people
| will stop reading any texts from the Web.
|
| And indeed, human got a good skill to skip ad blocks on pages.
|
| Next will be any texts on web pages: why to bother reading stuff
| that AI throws on us?
| golergka wrote:
| Why? Texts generated by AI are pretty useful. I read ChatGPT
| answers to my questions literally all the time.
| alangibson wrote:
| How sure are you it's not lying to you? I asked ChatGPT to
| write a description of common plasma cutter table features,
| and it didn't know the difference between initial height
| sensing and torch height control.
|
| I closed the browser tab and haven't gone back since.
| wetmore wrote:
| In many contexts it's easy to verify what ChatGPT tells
| you. There are ways to use ChatGPT as a tool that do not
| require it to always be right for it to be useful.
|
| For example, the other day I asked it something about the
| Flask codebase, and it found the relevant part of the
| codebase immediately. When I asked it about the behavior of
| the code, it wasn't always correct, but it still showed me
| the relevant code so I could read it way faster than I
| would have found it myself.
|
| Initially my impression of ChatGPT was the same as yours -
| I asked it some questions in a specialized domain I know
| well, and when it was wrong I decided ChatGPT is useless.
| But after enough people told me they find it useful, I took
| another look and tried finding more applications. And since
| then I've been impressed by what it can do.
| alangibson wrote:
| I can definitely see it being good for assisted learning.
| Quickly groking codebases seems to be one of the most
| popular uses.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| I just used it to write some tests, then I implemented and
| it failed. It then continued to explain what my setup was
| missing. Regarding coding v4 is become pretty accurate. And
| if it makes a mistake it's able to explain what went wrong.
|
| Regarding certain medical conditions I've asked to list the
| studies and explain them, it does that pretty well.
|
| But just as talking with a human, or with googling info on
| a website, or with Stackoverflow, Im always assuming I need
| to double check it.
| Shorel wrote:
| True that. It is replacing or complimenting some of my
| teachers right now.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| How soon do you think we'll have AI coming up with its own
| unique writing style?
|
| When do we get AI Hunter Thompson?
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| Or, what I believe to be a more plausible future, you just
| read, watch and listen to content from sources that you
| consider worthy of your time.
|
| Example: videos uploaded in the YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips
| have a high probability of being made by the Linus Tech Tips
| people and not just being completely AI generated, unless of
| course if that made the videos better, but I still think that
| the videos would be curated by the Linus Tech Tips team.
| whatch wrote:
| I was afraid of that too.
|
| But then I remembered that I had already stopped reading some
| common Google search results because they seemed too low effort
| for a very long time. And they often looked like they were
| generated, not written. Just three examples from different
| fields: Quora, CNN, and CNET. But the list is much longer. In
| non-English parts of the Internet, there is also poorly auto-
| translated content from websites like Stack Overflow, which is
| weirdly high in the Google results. Fortunately, I found
| extensions to block these websites in Google search. So for me,
| and I believe for many people, it has already happened.
|
| On the other hand, I enjoy reading articles from Simon Willison
| and Adam Johnson. And even though now we have very powerful
| chatbot services that can explain anything to you or
| effectively teach you some skill, I will most likely continue
| to read the content that they put on their blogs or elsewhere.
|
| Reputation did matter, and it will matter even more in the
| future. I believe people will continue to read other people's
| texts. At least I will.
| senko wrote:
| Why bother reading stuff that some underpaid overworked
| copywriter throws at us at the behest of a growth hacker, with
| the sole purpose to get us engaged?
|
| I, for one, would rather read an insightful piece by an author
| who has been helped by an AI than a soulless product of a
| content farm.
| samstave wrote:
| All the nay-sayers can go fuck themselves.
|
| -
|
| What about an AI built self-employment model.
|
| --
|
| What if you apply this to, say, making a decent self-shop for
| etsy-type users "Build me a hop using these product libs that I
| have made with descriptions and the picures" etc...
| Takennickname wrote:
| Can someone please explain as I truly don't understand: Are thin
| layers over an LLM considered valid startups now? What's the big
| deal? Half of the people on HN can build something better than
| this in a weekend.
| greyman wrote:
| It certainly has potential, I like it. There are also
| possibilities for additional features like prompt repository etc.
| What doesn't work for me is the pricing... normally, one already
| pays for ChatGPT+ and ChatGPT APIs, and now this wants additional
| more than $20... I would consider it, if it would somehow use the
| chat window or APIs with my API key, and the software will be $10
| max.
| alecfreudenberg wrote:
| How much did you pay for the domain?
| stewfortier wrote:
| Too much. Mid-five figures
| dbbk wrote:
| Why would you spend that much money before validating that
| anyone would pay for this?
| stewfortier wrote:
| We knew we wanted it and we figured there are more people
| like us out there.
| ginger_beer_m wrote:
| Did you spend as much on product development too?
| stewfortier wrote:
| Haha tough crowd. (Yes)
| user3939382 wrote:
| I'm getting burned out on the AI stuff. Every day it's half the
| posts on the front page. Startups, tools, it's neverending. It's
| somewhere on the spectrum between huge hype and real paradigm
| shift, so it's not unexpected, and very possibly not unwarranted,
| just tiring. If I could go a week without hearing about ChatGPT
| and AI tools that would be nice.
| dmje wrote:
| Maybe HN should make a category. I'm feeling your fatigue too.
| dang wrote:
| We don't have topic categories. We do try to downweight
| topics that have had large amounts of coverage, except when
| there's significant new information. The links in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35445497 point to lots
| of past explanations, if anyone wants more.
| dang wrote:
| It's a tough one because follow-ups [1] and repetition [2]
| aren't in the spirit of HN (it's hard to stay interested under
| a repetitive barrage), but significant new information _is_
| [3], and there has been a ton of that too. So we 're in
| tradeoff land. If it helps at all, we've downweighted a ton of
| AI-related posts that don't really contain new information. I
| know that many are still making it through though.
|
| The Launch HN posts are a special case because that's one of
| the things HN gives back to YC in exchange for funding it; and
| as you can imagine, there are a ton of AI related startups
| wanting to launch right now. However, Demo Day starts tomorrow,
| so you have two more threads to endure today (the other one
| being https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35445097) and Launch
| HN season should simmer down after that.
|
| [1]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
|
| [2]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
|
| [3]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
| iKlsR wrote:
| I really really liked https://reflect.app but needing an internet
| connection to access my notes is a miss for me. I don't need an
| app but I need something offline and locked down. I managed to
| replicate the experience of Reflect with Obsidian and several
| plugins such as a calendar, meetings and their canvas feature. I
| also don't even pay for syncing, I encrypt the vault (also a
| plugin) and keep the files in GDrive that I use and sync across
| devices.
|
| I like this but would not pay for another note, bookmark, todo or
| markdown/rich text editor app service. Also arguably true to hn
| fashion someone could roll this or get very close as an obsidian
| or other widely used tool plugin in short time.
|
| I also just checked reflect's page and they added a gpt4 prompt
| feature a couple weeks ago and you get all this for $10/mo.
| https://reflect.app/changelog
| pl90087 wrote:
| Complete with fake testimonials. I'll be downvoted for this, but
| that product is borderline unethical.
| dbbk wrote:
| That's what I thought. The first headline it generated was "How
| Type Works". But how would it know? It's just spewing out
| bullshit.
| locusofself wrote:
| Every day for the last few months I've been wishing I had a cabin
| in the woods with zero modern technology. A big shelf of books,
| my acoustic guitars and some comfy places to sleep.
| skor wrote:
| gotta love the fact that this is the top comment here
| sasas wrote:
| I'm literally planning to do this in a few days to get some
| solid focus time in. The thought of the disadvantage of not
| having an AI model to support already has crossed my mind (no
| internet access in the woods)
|
| It's noted that this editor supports offline - does this mean
| that the AI features also run offline? Or a limited version?
| stewfortier wrote:
| Unfortunately, everything _but_ the AI works offline. Though,
| maybe that 's a feature if you're planning a more mellow
| retreat :)
| sasas wrote:
| Have you considered a limited LLM that could run locally?
|
| > planning a more mellow retreat
|
| The objective here is to forcefully going to where internet
| is impossible (no phone reception, I don't have starlink)
| with the objective of focused productive output with
| limited distractions.
|
| The idea came to mind after reading about John Carmack
| doing this for a week, diving into AI using nothing but
| classic text books and papers as reference material to work
| off.
|
| EDIT: here is the HN thread on Carmack's week long retreat:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16518726
| capableweb wrote:
| > Have you considered a limited LLM that could run
| locally?
|
| I think there are two main issues here. LLM are large
| (the name even hints at it ;) ) and the smaller ones
| (still, multiple GB) are really, really bad.
| rrgok wrote:
| Winter is coming...
|
| On a serious note, I hope AI will help me write documentation.
| But at that point, do we still need documentation?
| capableweb wrote:
| If you use AI to write the documentation, then it's unlikely
| to be better than the documentation people could generate
| themselves with GPT-4. But it will be a while before it's
| better than documentation written by professional writers
| that have all the context, target audience in mind and know
| what they are documentation inside and out.
| jaqalopes wrote:
| > "Generate a testimonials section."
|
| What a perfect use case for AI hallucinations!
| rvz wrote:
| You might have just given Microsoft Word, Google Docs and Notion
| free ideas to absorb.
| cube2222 wrote:
| This looks really cool! I think the UX around selecting a subpart
| of the text and asking it to rewrite that is very promising (also
| for stuff like code editing; it'd be awesome to have this built-
| in to your IDE, not sure if VS Code already has it).
|
| My only worry with this is that I'm not sure what the long-term
| edge will be. This whole product looks a bit like just a feature
| that will soon be added to MS Office Word. I'd love to hear more
| from the authors about how they plan to differentiate themselves
| here.
| stewfortier wrote:
| We think about that a lot! I think this reply from my co-
| founder summarizes our answer well:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35442714
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| Maybe I haven't been patient enough but I use chat gpt 4 all the
| time for code.
|
| But to write real quality articles is quite hard to get right.
|
| It uses a lot of words, but a lot of fluffy filler sentences.
|
| With code it just seems to get me, especially V4. But with
| writing it's always off.
|
| Maybe it's me or maybe they've just put a lot of time in training
| it on coding feedback, or maybe writing is harder because it's
| much more interpretable what a good article is.
|
| In some cases I actually got better results writing with 3.5.
| all2 wrote:
| There is this terse but dense sweet spot between Crichton and
| Sire ( _Naming the Elephant_ ) that I aspire to.
|
| Both require deep knowledge that surfaces in a few well chosen
| words that are packed together intelligibly. None of the GPT
| outputs can match that kind of linguistic mastery. I suppose I
| should add "yet", but I don't want to.
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| I'm not sure it will. I always thought coding was hard. But I
| came to conclusion writing is harder.
|
| But it could also be that they are reinforcing gpt by senior
| devs.
|
| But the writing in some cases maybe reinforced by "normal"
| people.
| azubinski wrote:
| Now it is completely impossible to understand the meaning of
| mysterious definition "a solid authoring experience" because it's
| completely unclear who is the author.
| sfbartist wrote:
| This is unbelievable! I think Type will truly empower its users
| to write stunning prose with minimal effort. It's rare that
| something comes along that generates value for the VCs while also
| making the world a better place. The SFBA is very special -- no
| place else in the world could such great ideas come together with
| flawless execution. The creators of GPT missed the boat here;
| competing tech is really catching up.
| [deleted]
| lyair1 wrote:
| First of all, good luck and the implementation looks pretty
| slick.
|
| I relate to the other comments that (1) Explosion of AI generated
| blogs / copy etc is not what we need and it's hard to see the
| value of it long term (2) this looks like a simple usage on top
| of GPT4, no real IP / innovation - this is risky from a business
| model perspective.
|
| Good luck!
| rpgbr wrote:
| It looks like just a feature of Word/Ai Writer/etc indeed.
| visarga wrote:
| > this looks like a simple usage on top of GPT4, no real IP /
| innovation
|
| You can generate the first draft in the chatGPT-4 window, then
| ask it to add a section or expand a list and it works pretty
| well in the chat interface. So it's not really hard to write
| articles with bare chatGPT UI.
| stewfortier wrote:
| To each their own :). I do think it's a big space and plenty
| of folks will find ChatGPT helpful enough to not warrant a
| more vertical / specific solution like ours.
| stewfortier wrote:
| Thanks! I do agree with #1, and I think we need to make that
| clearer in our messaging. For context, I'll re-share one my
| replies to a related comment:
|
| > The thing that excites me most about generative AI isn't
| "more," it's better. I often use Type to write satire and now
| whenever I hit a block, I don't tab over to Twitter - I have
| Type generate some ideas. Often, I don't use them as-is but
| they do inspire a new angle I hadn't thought of.
|
| One #2, I think there's some truth to that today. But our
| belief is that over time, these products will start to evolve
| into something more advanced and useful. A product like Type,
| for example, won't really look like Google Docs + AI in 3
| years, it will start to feel like a more novel category of
| tool. We'll see, though!
| Kwpolska wrote:
| How will it look in 3 years then, and why doesn't it look
| this way today?
| yuuuuyu wrote:
| In 3 years it will also come complete with fake images,
| diagrams, photos, sound bites and video clips.
|
| We'll all be locked in to walled gardens (figuratively)
| since anything out on the wild/open/unverified internet
| will just be fake. This is what could rescue traditional
| media if they play their cards right. Providing genuine
| content by authenticated and verified-human authors.
| echelon wrote:
| "fake thoughts"
|
| "fake emotions"
|
| "fake ideas"
|
| "fake attractions"
|
| "fake memes"
|
| "fake dreams"
|
| I imagine the Luddites were themselves angry about fake
| work and fake souls. We did okay though.
|
| Humans will cope [1]. We are resilient as fuck. We once
| had to fend off lions and bacterial infections and
| getting throttled in the night. Now we worry about
| lattes, stock prices, and political hullabaloo. We'll be
| fine.
|
| [1] (Not just cope. I'm willing to bet that it'll be
| better than everything that came before.)
| stewfortier wrote:
| Because we're still figuring it out and it takes a while to
| build new stuff (not a great answer, I know - but it's the
| honest one)
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Sounds like vaporware.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I'm _extremely_ surprised to see all of the YC companies that
| are essentially just layers on OpenAI.
|
| I think it's safe to assume more models will be introduced and
| vendor lock-in can be avoided, but I find it hard to believe
| some of the "simpler" ideas can create compelling, VC-scale
| businesses.
| anon291 wrote:
| Why are you surprised? OpenAI is Sam Altman's (YC's last
| leader) pet project. Of course, YC is highly incentivized to
| produce more customers for OpenAI
| iamdamian wrote:
| Incentivized how, specifically?
| anon291 wrote:
| Well there's this thing called friendship. You see,
| executives at VC firms and such are typically pretty
| friendly with each other, and view their fellow
| executive's success as potentially pulling them up the
| ladder. AI is the next big thing. Sam Altman and his
| company is in a nice spot to profit. Moreover, YC
| research is an investor in OpenAI.
|
| Thus, because the executives want Altman to succeed (to
| presumably advance their own career) and because they're
| in charge of YC, which is an investor in openai, they
| have every incentive in funding startups that then use
| OpenAI as the main platform.
| jfengel wrote:
| I suppose it's inevitable that the first uses are going to be
| the trivial ones. They'll be first to market.
|
| I'm sure they imagine that when they figure out something
| actually worth doing, they'll already have a user base and
| revenue stream and reputation. If there's somebody out there
| doing something more innovative, they'll either buy them out
| or reproduce their idea in-house.
|
| Me, I'm skeptical that there's a "there" here. But that's why
| somebody else is getting rich and I'm not.
| autoconfig wrote:
| I think it's both correct and realistic to assume that most
| ideas won't reach venture scale size. After all, the vast
| majority of startups fail. However I'd like to point out that
| any software product that is built is per definition a layer
| on top of something else and it will always start small. The
| key question is whether that "layer" is useful and if it can
| keep getting increasingly useful with time.
| marban wrote:
| Also: https://lex.page/
| stewfortier wrote:
| Yep! We're definitely not the only show in town. I'd love to
| know if there are any Lex features you prefer over Type.
| xlance wrote:
| No support for other than English?
| stewfortier wrote:
| It should support pretty much any language! The commands will
| attempt to generate text in whatever language is already in the
| document (though, it's certainly not perfect yet and will
| sometimes return English no matter what).
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Should I just apply to YC with a company that's nothing more than
| "(X) thing people do every day but powered by GPT-4's API"?
| chankstein38 wrote:
| -Honestly just me spouting off because I'm in a bad mood. Can't
| delete-
| stewfortier wrote:
| We thought it was pretty descriptive and at least as
| imaginative as "Word" or "Docs." But we're open to suggestions!
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Honestly, fair. Sorry I'm a little off today but that's
| definitely fair. I ended up reading your description and your
| mission actually aligns with my problems with the experience
| of using LLMs for writing. The whole "one shot block of text"
| thing can be overwhelming and make it harder to use. I'm
| going to delete the parent comment but wanted to say that.
| stewfortier wrote:
| No worries! I really appreciate you giving it a closer
| look, and I'm glad our general philosophy seems to
| resonate. Please shoot me an email if you ever try it and
| have any feedback. I'm [Firstname] @ type.ai.
| WolfOliver wrote:
| Is it using openAPI APIs behind the scenes?
| stewfortier wrote:
| Yep, we are primarily leveraging OpenAI's APIs. We've started
| to experiment with Anthropic's Claude as well and it seems
| promising.
| rishabhjain1198 wrote:
| Congrats on the launch, Type looks great!
|
| I was curious, is there any difference you noticed for your
| use case with GPT vs Claude?
| stewfortier wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Claude seems to be especially strong with creative writing
| and writing in a wider breadth of styles, which ends up
| being really important.
| ninjaa wrote:
| Looks dope
| WolfOliver wrote:
| What export formats does it support?
| autoconfig wrote:
| Hi! We currently don't have an export feature although that is
| something that we want to add. With that said we've made it as
| easy as possible for you to copy and paste our documents into
| other editors. If you paste a Type doc into Google Docs for
| example it will retain all your formatting and if you paste it
| into a text editor, it will land as correctly formatted
| markdown.
| esfandia wrote:
| A .tex export format would make this super attractive to
| researchers writing scientific articles.
| bckr wrote:
| Looks pretty darn good. I love the flow of hotkey-prompt-output.
| I'll try this for writing my sci-fi story.
| stewfortier wrote:
| Appreciate it, would welcome your feedback after you've given
| it a spin. You can email me anytime at [first name] at type.ai.
| monroewalker wrote:
| What is the editor built off of? Prosemirror?
| addisonl wrote:
| Looks very similar to what Google will be adding to Google Docs--
| what makes Type worth almost $300 a year?
| stewfortier wrote:
| The honest answer is that it'll be hard for us to answer that
| until we try out what they've built!
| alangibson wrote:
| Feature, not a product. Not hating on the founders, but has YC
| gotten so big it just accepts projects based on keyword matching
| now?
| nico wrote:
| Tons of products have been built on a single great feature.
|
| Tons of amazing products have also completely failed to gain
| traction.
|
| In this case, the goal is to build a business. If they can get
| enough people excited about their offering, it doesn't matter
| if you consider it a feature or a product. You are not their
| target market, and that's ok.
| alangibson wrote:
| There are large encumbents in this space that can't be hand
| waved away with 'not their target market.'
|
| FWIW I am their target market. I will use AI powered document
| editing when Atlassian, Github and Notion integrate it as a
| feature.
| nico wrote:
| > FWIW I am their target market. I will use AI powered
| document editing when Atlassian, Github and Notion
| integrate it as a feature
|
| You just contradicted yourself. You said you are the target
| market and then immediately described why you are not the
| target market right now.
|
| If you are not an early adopter of this thing, or if it
| doesn't have an immediate application for you, then you are
| not the target market. Whether you like it or not and
| whether the project owners know it or not.
|
| When you consider it a viable alternative to solve your
| needs, then you will be their target audience.
| autoconfig wrote:
| Hi Alan. Our target audience is people that write long form
| content. In order for the product to provide a great user
| experience for that audience we feel that we need to build
| an opinionated editor and integrate AI in an opinionated
| way into that editor. It's hard for me to see how that is a
| product inside GitHub or Atlassian.
|
| Notion (and others) is undeniably an incumbent that as you
| say can't be hand waved away. With that said we are already
| getting feedback from paying customers that feel we're
| better at some things, including a snappier editing
| experience and a more natural way to interact with the AI
| portion. I also think our chat integrates in a way that
| sets us apart.
|
| If you really think you are in the target audience I would
| encourage you to give it a chance. We're very open to
| feedback and if there's anything specific that you think
| other products are doing better, we want to address it.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Hi,
|
| When I read the description I immediately thought of Ben
| Evans talking about how what happens when your entire
| company is rendered into a feature by an encumbant [0]
| (FWIW I disagree with his attack on antitrust).
|
| So, how are you going to make sure Type survives
| Microsoft adding ChatGPT to Word, or Substack offering
| something similar, etc.
|
| [0] https://www.ben-
| evans.com/benedictevans/2020/12/21/google-bu...
| schnebbau wrote:
| Also, so many are building their whole business around an API
| they do not control. They are one OpenAI decision away from
| being deleted.
| punnerud wrote:
| It's now start to exist open source versions of ChatGPT and
| competitors, so I don't think this is going to be a
| significant risk in 1-2years
| alangibson wrote:
| So far it's looking like OpenAI will have a surprisingly
| shallow moat. Open source is already right on its heels.
| Midjourney is killing it in image generation with 11
| employees.
|
| Then in a few years Apple will do what it does and step in
| to make billions off of a nearly mature technology.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Is it looking like that? They are still way ahead of
| Google, yet alone the open source alternatives. Of course
| things could change quickly.
| tin7in wrote:
| There are alternative models and with something like
| langchain you could swap them or run multiple in parallel.
| WalterSear wrote:
| OpenAI may remain the leader in the space, but there plenty
| of alternatives already. Give it a another minute or two and
| the alternatives will be as good as the current GPT4.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| People said the same about iOS apps, but some of those
| companies were eventually purchased for billions.
|
| In general, if you want guaranteed success this is the wrong
| industry for you. Sometimes you've just got to accept the
| risk.
| punnerud wrote:
| YC accepts about 2% of the ones applying, and plan for only 2%
| to become home runs.
|
| I like this idea. So simple, but a great product on top of
| ChatGPT
|
| (Cited from one of the lates YouTube videos, don't remember
| which one)
| alphabet9000 wrote:
| While such tools may have their benefits, they also have
| significant drawbacks that could ultimately make the world a
| worse place.
|
| Firstly, AI-powered document editors rely heavily on algorithms
| and pre-existing templates to generate content, which means that
| the output can lack creativity and originality. As a result, we
| risk losing the human touch and the ability to express unique
| perspectives and ideas that cannot be replicated by a machine.
|
| Secondly, relying on AI to generate content can lead to a lack of
| accountability and transparency. It can be challenging to trace
| the source of information, and this could lead to widespread
| dissemination of false or biased information. This could have
| disastrous consequences, particularly in areas such as politics
| or finance.
|
| Thirdly, AI-powered document editors could also lead to job loss
| and exacerbate existing societal inequalities. It's likely that
| many jobs that require writing skills could be automated, leading
| to significant job losses. This could particularly impact those
| who are already marginalized and disadvantaged.
|
| In conclusion, while AI-powered document editors might seem like
| a convenient solution, it's essential to consider their potential
| downsides. In my opinion, it's crucial to maintain the role of
| humans in creating content, so we can preserve creativity,
| accountability, and fairness in our society.
| xeyownt wrote:
| Everything you say seems like made-up and irrelevant. In fact,
| an AI could write the same.
|
| There is no evidence that AI-powered writing leads to lack of
| creativity.
|
| AI is not responsible for the publication of documents. It is
| your duty as (co-)author to make sure that what you say is
| valid, and to make the necessary fact-checking before
| publication.
|
| If anything, AI will on the opposite gives access to work to
| MORE people, possibly people that are less proficient in
| writing, but still might have interesting ideas.
|
| All this AI FUD, it's really the history repeating itself.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| I'm convinced this was written by ChatGPT.
| tobr wrote:
| I assume this comment was written using AI, which gets the real
| risk of writing with AI across - there's no substance to the
| writing, just generic words and sentences about a topic. And as
| always when you ask ChatGPT to write something, it starts the
| last paragraph with "In conclusion...", as if to prompt itself
| that it's time to wrap up.
| visarga wrote:
| GPT rolled
| mdolon wrote:
| The demo videos with different block types are super interesting.
| Assuming there are plans to add image blocks or other
| rich/dynamic media? Could see that being very powerful as new
| models are made accessible.
| esfandia wrote:
| The paragraph-by-paragraph contextual help provided here makes
| the interaction with AI much smoother! Makes me think something
| like this would also be a natural fit for Jupyter notebooks.
| visarga wrote:
| Can you add a library of documents? The model should use search
| to pad the prompt with relevant demonstration examples before
| generating the answer. It would be much easier to draw from a
| known library of text than just using raw GPT.
| stewfortier wrote:
| This is something we're very excited about building. We haven't
| shipped it yet, but we have a pretty clear roadmap to get
| there. Stay tuned!
| bozhark wrote:
| I'm not code savvy, would be lovely if I could point type at
| our drive account and have it use that as a source library.
| stewfortier wrote:
| Agreed! We've begun exploring some ways to do that.
| csmpltn wrote:
| Two comments:
|
| 1. This should've been an addon/plugin for the top-5 most used
| text editors (Word, Google Docs), potentially also a plugin for
| WordPress/Drupal/Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, instead of a
| standalone text editor that nobody's going to download.
|
| 2. Looks like every YC startup now is going to be a thin wrapper
| around OpenAI's GPT endpoints. "Dump your ideas into this textbox
| and let the magical black box add some fluff". Things are going
| to get boring, old and non-original _very quickly_.
| awestroke wrote:
| Literally nobody installs addons for word or Google apps.
| Nobody cares about WordPress. You can't have plugins for social
| networks, and this is for long form text anyway. Bad ideas all
| around
| esafak wrote:
| And companies even block them for security.
| bloppe wrote:
| I think a docs plugin would be pretty sweet. Would install.
| It's probably not the kind of thing you can start a company
| around, though. More like a side project.
| jaapbadlands wrote:
| Google will soon be adding this sort of stuff directly to
| their office tools anyway, just like Microsoft is.
| whatch wrote:
| Didn't try it, but isn't it how Grammarly works? Just an
| addon for any input field
| evrydayhustling wrote:
| This. Should be a browser plugin for maximum deployment
| impact.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Nobody cares about WordPress._
|
| 29.41% of the world's top 10K websites use WordPress. 29.65%
| of the world's top 100K websites use WordPress. I wish nobody
| cared about me like that.
| chaxor wrote:
| This is HN... People enjoy not using Microsoft or Google
| products. Do it on neovim and people will be happy.
| sakras wrote:
| > Things are going to get boring, old and non-original very
| quickly.
|
| I'd say they already have. I have half a mind to write a HN
| front end that filters out any posts with the phrases "GPT",
| "LLM", and "AI".
| remkop22 wrote:
| I would gladly use it
| mixmixmix wrote:
| I'll use it more than this type or whatever document thingie
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Nice. I do hope you'll let GPT4 do that for you.
| Closi wrote:
| Looks awesome! Congrats on the launch.
|
| Just one small silly bit of feedback - in your demo video you
| show one of the use-cases as showing you coming up with fake user
| testimonials, maybe not the best use-case to show!
| stewfortier wrote:
| I really need to re-record that, I agree! I make a passing
| comment to replace them with real quotes, but at that point I
| guess the AI wouldn't have been all that helpful.
| Closi wrote:
| Ah, I had audio off! :)
| manishsharan wrote:
| What I would pay for is the exact opposite of this.
|
| I am not looking forward to being deluged by pages and pages of
| AI generated content that will surely be sent out by MBA types
| looking to make a name for themselves as visionaries and flooding
| my inbox.
|
| What I want is a tool that reads documents or corporate memo or
| email and extracts the key message into a small paragraph or two.
| [deleted]
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Can't bing chat do that already? You can tell it to summarise
| the page you are looking at.
| stewfortier wrote:
| My co-founder and I both resonate with this and we probably
| need to make our positioning clearer given that it didn't come
| through here.
|
| The thing that excites me most about generative AI isn't
| "more," it's better. I often use Type to write satire and now
| whenever I hit a block, I don't tab over to Twitter - I have
| Type generate some ideas. Often, I don't use them as-is but
| they do inspire a new angle I hadn't thought of.
|
| That said, I can see how we have a lot of work to do making
| that more clear. And I can certainly see how a product like
| ours or ChatGPT could be used to produce lots of mediocre
| writing - which is undesirable.
|
| Appreciate the feedback!
| jhp123 wrote:
| is there any demand for this? The market for human writing
| services seems small. Why do you expect people to pay for
| inferior AI writing when so few are paying humans to write or
| edit for them?
| stewfortier wrote:
| Yep, we've acquired hundreds of paying customers since
| launching about a month ago. And we don't see the market here
| as "people who hire writers" -- we see it as "people who must
| write to get paid."
| block_dagger wrote:
| Nice work. I would recommend a name that is more unique for
| lookup purposes.
| stewfortier wrote:
| That's fair! At a minimum, we probably should start saying
| "Type.ai" more often than just "Type."
| swyx wrote:
| congrats stew! (good to see you back with a new idea)
|
| sooooo. this is a classic business strategy sort of thing. you,
| an AI startup, have to build Notion, faster than Notion can build
| AI features.
|
| your work is cut out for you. i dont have any suggestions but
| would love to hear your thoughts on how to outcompete massive
| incumbents.
| autoconfig wrote:
| Hey swyx. Stefan, co-founder and CTO chiming in here. I think
| our strategy here is pretty simple (although not easy). We have
| our opinion and our vision on what this product ultimately
| should look like, we trust that that opinion coupled with our
| capability to execute and listen to our customers will at the
| end of the day deliver a product that has enough differentiated
| value that is carves out it's own segment. This probably sounds
| a bit hand-wavy but I really think that is how you need to
| operate. If you're too focused on what the competition does the
| product loses its soul.
|
| At the end of the day though that thinking obviously needs to
| translate into a set of features that sets us apart. When
| comparing to Notion specifically we already have a few of those
| that make us stick out and that our customers appreciate such
| as offline first support, instant search, writing suggestions,
| and most recently our chat integration.
|
| Btw huge fan of your new podcast! :)
| stewfortier wrote:
| Stefan pretty much captured my perspective! I might just add
| a couple of related things:
|
| We have a subtle but important difference in focus compared
| to a product like Notion. We're not aiming to build the best
| knowledge or workplace management product. We're really
| focused on building something that helps you author high-
| quality content (usually, that will be shared publicly).
|
| Secondly, IMO the end-state of many of these products won't
| look like Microsoft Word/Notion + AI. I think entirely new
| interfaces and workflows will be discovered over the next 2-3
| years that wouldn't have been possible without today's LLMs.
| The one advantage we have is no priors - we can take big
| swings on "risky" ideas.
|
| Like Stefan said, I know both of those probably still sound a
| little hand-wavey but it's part of what keeps us motivated to
| keep building.
| howon92 wrote:
| I like this. Keep it up guys!
| chatmasta wrote:
| Are people happy with Notion? We didn't renew our (extremely
| expensive) subscription. The product is clunky and slow. As a
| team, we never needed the collaboration features. In the rare
| case where we do need some real-time shared writing space
| (mostly just for taking notes during Zoom meetings), we make an
| O365 document.
|
| As individuals, a lot of us have moved to Obsidian, but we
| aren't using it collaboratively. Personally I just use it as a
| simple note taking space; I keep a note for everything I've
| googled multiple times, and I can pull it up quickly with a
| simple cmd+p or cmd+shift+f. Notion provides basicallly the
| opposite experience (open a website, wait for it to load, use
| their shoddy search, wait for _that_ to load, then maybe find
| what you 're looking for).
|
| As a team, we don't feel like we're missing anything without
| Notion. We collaborate in markdown using GitLab pull requests
| and Mattermost chat messages. Some of us write that content in
| Obsidian and then paste it into the GitLab text input (have you
| ever tried pasting markdown into Notion? Good luck with that!)
|
| I think some non-devs might prefer Notion, but as a dev, the
| idea of using some proprietary React frontend as a note taking
| tool is the opposite of what I want. Obsidian is great.
|
| IMO Notion got distracted with this "database" idea, where
| everything is a "block," because the reality of it is that the
| experience of everyday text editing becomes infuriating.
| Nothing will make me resent a product like unintuitive
| shortcuts that hijack my return key and closing backticks (also
| see: ClickUp).
| dfinninger wrote:
| I find that it's great for keeping track of my D&D campaigns.
| It has a lot of features that make it great for managing that
| small group of people. I also co-manage a WoW guild with it.
| Roster, todo's etc. Great for a small number of
| collaborators.
|
| I don't really produce _documents_ with it. That does seem
| annoying with all of the blocks. I just use Google Docs for
| that use case. I find Notion to be something like Evernote
| with Airtable dropped right in. I _don 't_ think I would use
| it to replace Confluence or whatever. But as a way to share
| my Org-mode oriented brain with other folks, it works nicely.
| [deleted]
| kumarski wrote:
| I feel as if there's 100+ of these splattered across daily deals
| software sites and betalist.com.
| stewfortier wrote:
| We feel similarly. There are a lot of products in this space.
| Very few are enjoyable to use, though.
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