🤖 The (AI) tool everyone needs

Hello AInauts,

Summer is here! We can see it in the tenfold increase in the number of out-of-office notes.

But of course, we're still going full steam ahead. Despite it being 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) today, we have lots of news, things to try out and useful basic AI know-how.

Here's what we have in store for you:

• 📖 Translating long texts with AI (... the token-problem)

• 🤖 Everyone needs this (AI) tool

• 👯 Friend - your AI bestie for lonely days

Let's go!

📖 Translating long texts with AI (... the token-problem)

Let's start with what we think is a super exciting topic, but often leads to frustration for many AI users. At the same time, we can shed light on a fundamental topic of language models.

Let's take a practical example: Let’s imagine you want to have a long text or even a book translated by AI.

It would be great if you could simply upload the book as a PDF to ChatGPT, and say "Please translate!", and after a few minutes you'll get a translated PDF.

(Yes, with Deepl.com this works to some extent - but for many use cases, the quality is not good enough all the time).

Unfortunately, of course, it doesn't work that easily. ChatGPT will start and then you will get an error message quite quickly, or it will simply stop:

You will have a similar experience if you want ChatGPT to write a book. ChatGPT stops writing at some point, and you have to manually hit "Continue", "Continue", "Continue" to make sure that something happens.

The reason for the problem: Token window limitations

If you've been working with language models and AI for a while, you've probably come across the terms "token" or "context window" many times.

Here is a simplified explanation of what these two terms mean:

🪙 Token

Language models do not go by words, but divide the text into so-called tokens. There is a very rough rule of thumb: 4 tokens are 3 words

🪟 Context Window

The context window is the maximum memory capacity that the language model has in a conversation. In other words, this is the maximum number of tokens that the model can keep in the cache to answer your questions.

For GPT-4o, for example, this is 128,000 tokens. If your prompts or conversations go beyond the scope of the context window, it forgets (usually the first) parts.

The main problem with our translation example is the maximum number of output tokens.

As you can see in the image above, GPT-4o can work with just under 4,000 tokens. This means that ChatGPT cannot give answers that are longer than approx. 3,000 words.

This is how you can easily solve the problem (manually)

If you want to translate texts that have many thousands of words, you first have to convert them into tokens and then split them up and translate them individually.

Or you can work with the rule of thumb - GPT-4o can handle 3,000 words in any case. Then you can simply use text splitting tools and have the long text split up. There are many options, here is one free tool.

This is how you can easily solve the problem (automated)

However, if you simply want to translate a PDF or an entire book, the manual process is of course very tedious and annoying.

The cool thing is: you can also set up the whole process completely automated with Zapier!

This allows you to build an automation that starts when you upload the PDF to a Google Drive, splits the text into predefined parts and then sends the individual parts one after the other to the chatbot of your choice for translation - for example Claude.

The results are then saved in a Google Sheet. This is what the flow looks like:

The most important element here is the text splitter of Zapier's own formatter app. There, you can select the function Split Text Into Chunks for AI Prompts. Then select the number of tokens below and you're done.

Of course, this is a rather advanced form of automation. But you really can have entire books translated automatically in just a few minutes.

P.S. If you are interested in learning more about automation topics, please reply to this e-mail.

🤖 The (AI) tool everyone needs

We often receive messages with questions about tools. Which tool for presentations, which tool for texts, which tool for images...?

New applications hit the market every day. And we have to clean up our subscriptions once a month because we test so many tools (just for you) and pay for at least 1–2 months. 😉

We try to live by two rules:

• Remain as open as possible about which tool and model we use

• Rely on the tools that have proven that they are and will remain leaders

Today we want to talk about a tool that we can no longer live without. And is also affordable for almost everyone.

We're talking about ... Canva!

Before you say: "Eww, cold coffee!", keep reading.

First reason: Canva is constantly releasing new AI features, and integrating many functionalities of other AI tools.

For example, you can have Canva automatically find potentially viral highlights from your long-form videos. This will soon save us another tool, Opus Clip.

Simply take your long form video, open it in Magic Studio and click on Highlights.

Then you can select the best of the suggested highlights, and you have 3-4 potentially viral social media video clips.

And that's just one of Canva's countless AI features.

But now to reason number two:

Canva is buying another one of our favorite tools, Leonardo.ai!

We like to use Leonardo to quickly and easily train LoRAs, i.e. image models, on our data.

But Leonardo can do so much more. If you're interested, here's a short hype reel:

Since Leonardo is now part of Canva, we assume that many of the Leonardo features will soon be available in Canva.

And soon another tool will be replaced.

We could go on and on with this article. No matter what you need:

• Images

• Designs (of all kinds)

• Powerpoints

• Videos

Canva has it all. And it iterates incredibly fast, the Magic Studio gets new feature updates almost weekly.

What's more, Canva is free to use, and even Premium is quite affordable at around 10 dollars a month.

Here is a brief overview of the AI-Magic Studio from Canva

👯 Friend - your AI companion for lonely days

Finally, a new concept has just been launched and will probably cause a lot of controversy again.

Avi Schiffmann has introduced friend. (He has already won the domain game once with the snappy friend.com ).

The name says it all. Friend is your AI friend that you have hanging around your neck all the time.

Another AI device? Yes exactly, there have been quite a few here recently, such as Rewind.ai aka Limitless.ai (we are still waiting for our order), or the Humane Pin, which was completely destroyed by YouTuber MKBHD - rightly so, a really immature concept and product.

But friend comes along with a new approach. It's about friendship, about communication, not about productivity.

The promise is simple: never feel alone again. Watch the video here:

As with all AI hardware, data protection, latency and the like will play a major role here too. The question will be whether friend can really keep its promises and how it can position itself against ChatGPT-4o Voice.

We will see - and keep you posted!

P.S. You can pre-order friend for just under 90 dollars (Shipping only to the US or Canada).

That's it for today. We hope you liked it - see you next time!

Reto & Fabian from the AInauts

P.S.: Follow us on social media - that motivates us to keep going 😁!
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