You can use this thread for posting any feedback related to the Lynx beta.
If you’re testing on Android or iOS and want to try out the Web version, you can access it here Login - LingQ
We want to keep everything open ended, so let us know any of your thoughts - Everything from a bug you found to a feature suggestion is fair game.
You can also make a separate thread if you want to focus discussion on a particular topic.
It would be great if, at any given point, we could click a button and get feedback (from the AI) overall on our conversation. For example, are there certain grammatical constructions that I am using improperly, or do I make word order mistakes, etc. You could ask the AI to provide a response that is perhaps 100-500 words long in response (perhaps including examples of correct constructions, etc) and then that summary document could also be imported into LingQ as a lesson.
The biggest challenge I see right now is that I tried the AI in Serbian, but I often make spelling mistakes due to incorrect accents (or just poor spelling), which makes me hesitant to load the original conversation into LingQ as a lesson since the majority of my chats have blue words simply due to incorrect spelling / grammar (which I would want to avoid - and I realize I can just ‘Ignore’ them, but it makes me hesitant to import as a lesson nonethless)
For Lynx to be useful in conjunction with the text, it needs to be available while studying/reading the text. As it is, you select a chapter to talk about and all you have is a blank screen.
Currently, what I do is enter sentence edit mode, copy the text, and then paste it into ChatGPT to ask questions about the word use, or grammar usage. Ideally, I’d’ be able to ask Lynx these questions without doing all that. So if I have sentence mode or page mode in effect, I would tap Lynx and ask my questions about the current sentence or current page. Perhaps a window would be open to the left of the text?
I’m currently reading the 3rd Harry Potter book in Spanish. I selected the chapter I’m currently reading to ask questions about it, but Lynx appeared to be stuck on the previous chapter. I asked Lynx to tell me what happened in the chapter and she described what was happening in the previous chapter.
Lynx has GREAT promise. You guys have a challenge, that’s for sure!
I agree with Mycroft. I often copy sentences or words into ChatGPT when I am reading the text. Having Lynx available at the same time as reading would be very powerful
@Mycroft @MatthewDonovan @michaelcu
There’s an extension that does the exact job you want.
For better UX, response streaming is necessary. Users don’t like waiting until the full response is loaded.
I really like this idea and am eager to try it out. Some initial feedback: I am seeing a few bugs in the iOS version that are not present in the web version.
If relevant, this is for Hebrew. I’m using iOS 17.7.2 on an iPhone 13 pro.
Hi all, On a quick use I think this is a great addition. Great to see. I agree it would be great to also have it available in lesson as an immediate feedback or ‘ai tutor’ to ask questions about - e.g. ask it to clarify an idiom, a grammatical construction, or the range of meanings of a word. It could even replace the current word look up feature with an AI lookup feature - i.e. when you click on a word or phrase the AI understands you are asking about the meaning or usage and it pops up an explanation with which you can further interact - asking the ai questions.
However having this AI feature is just the kind of thing I have wanted in lingq to make it a more comprehensive language platform. Currently we are limited to passive learning. The greatest value add I think an AI could bring is to provide active learning features - including using lingqs stats to monitor progress. While text based interaction is great and already allows this - live audio conversation with an AI would be ideal. To do this it would need better AI voices. The existing ones on the lingq (at least in Arabic) are now very dated and mechanical and grating to listen to and distort pronunciation. Upgrading the voices and introducing a ‘live’ audio conversation mode would make it really helpful in the language learning journey.
tts voice was a big turn off for me considering how free tools there are for utilizing AI voices. The audio transcription option which could be a game changer with Ai tools and such, but there has been a cap now. So I have to wait for the next month to use it. Nice improvement. In my opinion, LINGQ should focus on making their product more useful than adding extra bells and whistles that do not add any true value. Nonetheless, Best wishes.
i was wondering where the lynx button came from. Is there somewhere i can look to see exactly what the lynx ai can do and how i can use it for lingq?
Click right here LYNX AI
I’ve tried it a little bit and I was surprised it worked in Hebrew. I think for a first release it works very well - having a tool like this integrated into LingQ is very, very helpful and I’m sure there will be many more uses for it.
I have no idea how difficult it is, but it would also be amazing to have some NotebookLM like functions where it can take something in your target language and summarize it or comment on it the way NotebookLM can create a podcast about a certain topic. A feature like that which could be imported as a lesson would be amazing.
But for now great job on this beta version.
re: streaming - yes, definitely something we’ll introduce as soon as we can.
Yeah. That’s quite easy to implement.
Any other notes/thoughts about the overall flow + learning experience?
@nsprung I sent you a detailed message, but I’ll mention some of the key things here in case others want to comment on them.
Okay, I’ve had a play, maybe an hour or two in total with both web and iOS (iPad) interfaces. My general impression is that as a language learning tool this is outstanding. It addresses a key criticism of LingQ, namely the lack of real output and interaction. I suspect we would do something similar ourselves using YouTube and an AI, but LingQ adds convenience, which for me is worth paying for.
What I like:
I found this an incredibly useful way to practice output, revise a lesson and learn vocabulary. I was surprised how well I recalled vocabulary, such as la région frontalière, les troubles dissociatifs d’identité and les intempéries and that second example is a mouthful too. It’s like going back to school, and studying a subject in the L2.
It corrected my typos and grammar, very nice.
It provided an English translation of its output, I didn’t need it with French, but it’s a good idea. It might be nice but not essential to allow the user to toggle this feature.
What I don’t like:
On the web UI, I was unable to cancel the voice after accidentally pressing the read out aloud button. That is annoying with long texts.
The web UI got stuck several times during a session and I had to restart it. That said, this only happened the first time I used it.
Neither good nor bad:
It didn’t have to keep telling me how good my answers were! You Canadians are so polite.
In the iOS app, I could only access LynxAI from within a lesson, where it allowed me to then choose a lesson, rather than being able to launch it from the lessons list view. I can see the logic, but maybe have an option so that when you are in the list view, and click the three dots next to a video title, there is a LynxAI menu item.
The TTS voice is rather robotic although I am sure you considered better voices. It is acceptable, and useable, but a more natural voice would be desirable. I’m probably stating the obvious.
Suggested additions:
Some users like to earn points, update their word count and so on. Unless I’m mistaken this doesn’t do that.
Concerns:
We saw that the import facility with AI generated captions had to be removed for various reasons, and we keep seeing issues with importing. I hope this LynxAI is stable, and not subject to third party features that can and do change with time, causing LynxAI to go belly up. I recently had to think three times before renewing my subscription due to bugs and useability issues. I’m glad I stayed now that I’ve seen LynxAI.
Ability to change font size and screen background color (similar to reader).
For Japanese, allow the ability to disable spacing between characters (similar to reader).
Allow hot keys to be used.
That’s it so far.
I can see that numerous improvements have been made since I last commented, mostly welcome changes.
One step backwards for me is that it no longer corrects errors in my text, so I am not made aware of them, and they risk becoming ingrained. That has removed a large part of the benefit of using LynxAI. Could we please have that back, or at least a user option to turn on text correction?
I see you now have it prompting more conversation. That’s good, but it seems to go away from the video. Sometimes I want it to ask me another question specifically on the video content. Rather than typing “Can you give me another question on the video”, how about a button that prints out that text and submits it for me? Or something similar? Not a big deal, just a convenience.
Lastly, last night I clicked on the partitioned rectangle top left. It took me out of the conversation and I was unable to return, hence I lost it. Perhaps add a warning dialogue that the conversation will be lost, or a way to return? I don’t know if this is a issue shared by others or I am just unusually dumb. 
I want to reiterate my desire to have Lynx available while reading the text. I suppose I could have a separate tab open with Lynx open on it, but A: that would be no better than ChatGPT, and B: I would still need to copy the sentence via the edit box and I cannot copy paragraphs at all.
I’d like to ask Lynx about the current sentence, paragraph or next/previous. Why a certain word is used rather than another or how the grammar works in it. That’s how I use Chat, but it would be more convenient while reading inside Linq.
Try this one: LingQ Extension (Custom Layouts, GPT, AI-TTS, Lesson Audio Generation, etc.)
I made it for the exact purpose.
