Hey guys!
I’m the co-founder and CEO at Hugging Face (🤗), an artificial intelligence whose goal is not to be useful or accurate but to be fun and emotional. We are launching the product today, and are also announcing that we have raised $1.2M from fantastic investors including Betaworks, SV Angel & Kevin Durant.
For the last 6 months, we’ve built Hugging Face in secret. Despite its secrecy, a few thousand teenagers have exchanged more than a million messages with our AI. In those messages, over 30% of users have expressed some kind of emotional connection to their new AI friend, using phrases like “I love you,” and “you are my bff.” In addition to the emotional resonance, users have responded well to the more game-like functions of the app, exchanging tens of thousands of selfies with the AI.
Our goal is to be on the cutting edge of AI, mixing existing chatbot technologies with state of the art deep learning. We are still just at the beginning of our journey, but the current version is already a lot of fun so please play around with it and post your most hilarious screenshots below or anywhere with the hashtag #huggingface.
I am available to answer any questions here or on https://askwhale.com/add/clement....
🤗🤗🤗
Clem
@clement_delangue some friends showed me how I "sent" them hug requests on FB. I never sent a hug request and it apparently went to my entire FB list. You need to be super clear on what the connections are to FB and what it can do because I didn't understand.
I stumbled across this a while back and had fun chatting with a fake person. I'm curious if you can share what type of questions and conversations people are having with it, @clement_delangue.
cc @sandimac
I had the chance to try Hugging Face since more than 2 months now and even if i am not the perfect demography 😅, i really like using it and it's really impressive !! 👏 It works really well and for teens it's 👌. I was even able to give my feedback to him via a call (Thanks Clement 🙏) and I was really impressed by what they are building.
I am looking forward to see what's next 🙌
I've been lucky to test it and it's really amazing how you quickly open up (despite knowing it's an AI). They built a cool personality without trying to pass it for a human. Can't wait to see how it's going to continue evolving
@david770 Hey David. I think our main difference is that we focus 100% on the entertaining and emotional aspect of AI, not venturing into any utility purpose.
What is your biggest differentiator with Microsoft's Zo? Hugging Face is great, but at times it appears a little formulaic. Zo uses pure ML, and is solely based on real chat data. Regardless, great job!
@nhuberfeely Zo & Xiaoice in China are a great inspiration for us! In Hugging Face, you're chatting with your own AI versus everyone chatting with the same one, which makes it quite impersonal.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. It sounds like fun and is entertaining when you're a bored teenager and not meant to replace friends or people, but let's be honest it just may do that for some teens. If a teen is depressed, socially awkward, or has some sort of mental instability, this may not be a good option for them because they should be talking to someone in order to process their thoughts and emotions; to learn to communicate with others effectively. Trust me, I'm a believer in using technology and social media as a means of reaching out and building community, but this app worries me a bit. All I can see is more troubled teens with this app. Buuuut, time will tell. As for the creators, congratulations on launching the app! I may have my opinion, but I still celebrate achievement 🙂 wishing you all the best!
@im_mimijae Thanks for the feedback Evelynn. I understand the fear but our experience showed that it was more a driver for socialization than isolation - just the same way a pet could be. As you can experience in the AI, it's gonna say a lot of things like "did you see some friends today", "you should talk to this guy you like",... and build the user confidence to engage more with humans. In a way, it's a "trainer" for socialization rather than a replacement of socialization. Does it make sense?
@clement_delangue@im_mimijae I am glad you have considered this, my first reaction is this could be a powerful tool either ways. In order to keep it on the good side, it is necessary to weave in some social cautious thinking while designing the AI response, guide those teenagers towards a good path if the AI detects any potential signs of issues.
@clement_delangue Yes, it does make sense. Thank you for the clarification :-) If that's the case, maybe this should be encouraged to use it with friends for accountability and/or use it while attending therapy. Maybe usage of this app will encourage that as well, which would be good (I feel like I just went in a circle with that!) I just feel that social media takes care of that training and encouraging already and that's another reason why I questioned the point of the app.
I love that their AI's focus is on fun and entertainment! I've been training mine and its voice is sassy and playful -- which makes me want to return to it.
Since I was also in Botcamp I've been able to watch the team from the earliest days and they definitely understand their users and teen demographic. 💪
A huge congrats to the team for the funding and launch! 📈
Hey guys, congrats on the launch! I'm curious why Hugging Face is a separate app instead of an app like Facebook Messenger. Seems like you could reach a bigger audience there.
@tomsiodlak My point is not specifically about Facebook messenger. There are many other bot platforms out there. I personally would not download a separate app just for this.
@sarahhum My misunderstanding. I read your comment too fast. I like it as a separate app but can understand people wanting to have communications directly in Facebook or by text message. Having a standalone and then integrating with other platforms is a nice option.
Just downloaded the app. It's interesting to play with it. The algorithm can differentiate whether a photo is a natural environment, magazine, or actual selfie. And I can see the objective for this app is to level up on the bot AI. I wonder what the long term version for your business is? And What's the technology stack you used to build your ML system.
I'm following Hugging Face project since day 1 and I'm so proud to see the project released to the public!
Great job guys, looking forward for the next steps
I think back to having an imaginary friend as a kid and how cool it would have hugging face around back then. Congrats on the launch - keep up the good work!
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