
Show HN: Myra – AI based personal assistant you can text - viksit
http://www.getmyra.co
======
machbio
I think the problem with text based apps are that they cannot access our
location constantly and I as a user has to take an extra step to inform the AI
about my location every-time I need something.. As Myra is only limited to San
Francisco, it is suggesting only places in that city.. I do not whether its
possible for the message recipient to access our location on facebook..To the
Myra Developers, But there is a share location feature on Whatsapp and
Facebook that you guys should utilize to access our current location to
recommend more location based queries..

As this feature is in Beta, I do not expect it to be perfect - but they could
really improve on NLP in the application and understand my queries better, as
it goes off-course if two different queries with different words but same
meaning are asked..It is amazing, how this system is implemented but, if
anyone is trying to build similar product they should try SMSsync[1] by
Ushahidi - its still sort of beta product but gets the job done for a feature
similar to this..

[1]
[http://www.ushahidi.com/product/smssync/](http://www.ushahidi.com/product/smssync/)

EDIT: I was only talking about how to implement the gateway part of the
application quickly and not the whole Myra product, apologies for the
mistake..

~~~
viksit
@machbio - thank you for the feedback! Definitely, not only can you share
locations in whatsapp/FB, you can also do so in text messages. We have plans
to integrate that soon, especially as the system launches on more cities.

Regarding the natural language - yes, the language models are trained on a
dataset that doesn't yet account for all possible ways of expressing intent.
As more users such as you interact with the system, it will get better at
handling them.

~~~
machbio
Thank you for the reply.. I understand that for texts you could utilize SMS
gateway, is it possible for you to reveal how you programmatically access
WhatsApp and Facebook Messages..

------
fjaved
Very cool! I've been wondering why more messaging based assistants based in AI
aren't emerging versus human-aided (Magic, Operator, etc.). (I was excited
about carla.io but disappointingly it never really worked very well.)

This one is fast but still very natural. The suggested query in the onboarding
flow obviously works very well, but I tried to throw it for a loop by asking
where I can take a party of 20 for dinner in SF tonight (real problem so if
anyone has suggestions would love to hear them!).

The response wasn't tremendously useful, but it was still an intelligible and
coherent response (recommended 20 Spot--kind of a smart response actually!).

Asking friends, they've suggested Amici's or Buca Di Beppo so I can imagine
the algorithm learning or being taught over time to incorporate
characteristics like that (large groups). I like that it's a narrow use case
to start--focus on that and build from there. Much more optimistic than the
wide and shallow approach of Magic and Operator.

~~~
viksit
Thank you!

The language models here are still being trained, so there will definitely be
things it doesn't understand yet - eg, the fact that "party of 20" should
translate into "good for groups". But that's great feedback and glad you liked
it!

------
viksit
Thought I'd share what I've been working on for some time. Would love
feedback!

It uses Deep learning models for natural language. Happy to answer tech
related questions here.

Just a note: It's limited to San Francisco only for now - and it's still in
Alpha - there will be kinks!

~~~
malanj
Really cool work - nice going! Great application of Deep Leaning.

I'm really curious about the Whatsapp and Facebook messenger integration,
given that they don't seem to have published APIs. How did you do it?

~~~
Raphmedia
From what I understand, it's not that they are integrated. Those apps allow to
send and receive SMS. In doing so, they can simply send the queries via SMS on
those apps, allowing to receive the result there.

Edit: I was wrong!

~~~
viksit
To clarify - the system is in fact natively integrated across the SMS,
Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger protocols. :) It's not using SMS as a way to
talk to them.

If you use those, you'll see that the responses are almost instantaneous,
compared to the lag which SMS inherently has. There is a general purpose API
that can be used via any platform - Slack, Telegram, Gtalk, or email. Anything
that supports text.

~~~
philipjoubert
Thanks for clarification. I have used Whatsapp and it worked great until 08:30
PT when it suddenly stopped working.

When you say "natively integrated" what do you mean? As far as I can tell
there are no APIs for either Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger.

~~~
viksit
Ah, it's possible that there's some issue with the WA integration. I'll check.
In the mean time, SMS and FB Messenger should be active for sure!

I'm using thirdparty open source libraries to integrate FB and Whatsapp into
this.

------
stormy
Hard to beat the on-boarding experience—just input your number and get going.
I like the thought that went into making it as simple as possible.

The response times seem instantaneous, which given what's going on under the
hood, probably wasn't the easiest to accomplish. The speed went a long way to
keep me engaged and trying new queries. What tech stack does any given query
hit and what pieces needed the most focus to keep request latency low?

My major question is, when would I use this over Siri?

Siri is usually good enough for the same types of queries I tried. Good enough
and faster access to Siri will probably make my use of something like Myra
limited in current form.

For a more concrete example, if I am in the Mission and I don't know what's
good to eat, I'll hold down my home button on the iPhone and ask siri:
"restaurants in the mission". From there it's easy to get into Yelp and then
do all my further refinements and actions without needing to text or form any
more natural language queries.

Now, if future functionality is in place that gets over that 'good enough'
barrier, I think this is on to something.

Kudos.

~~~
viksit
Thank you for trying it out! Let me try to answer your queries. No pun
intended of course.

\- Siri doesn't maintain conversational context. If you wanted to find a sushi
place in SOMA, and the recommendation was too expensive, you could just say
"show me something cheaper" to Myra. For Siri, you'd have to repeat saying
"cheap sushi places in the mission" which (doesnt work today and) would show
you a whole different set of results. You can also never ask Siri things like
"Show me reviews for Foreign Cinema" and "get me a reservation there".

\- Siri's not good at answering questions. If you ask it for happy hour places
in the mission for instance, or the best outdoor date spot in SF - the results
are simply not useful. Myra will not only recommend a place, but also things
like when the happy hour time is, and why the japanese gardens in Golden Gate
Park are a good outdoor date spot. More importantly, it will factor in things
like open times and available reservations when showing you this data.

\- Also, when you're having a group conversation with other people, when it's
too noisy around you, or you have something private to say - text is always
better.

Re: Tech stack - for every query, you are actually seeing live results (for
instance, reservation data can't be cached). Doing the NL parts quickly was
the most challenging piece so far. It's written in Python.

Hope this helps.

------
zatkin
Are we heading in the direction of WeChat where we have a single app as a
platform?[1][2][3][4]

[1] [https://medium.com/@mg/there-s-a-chat-for-that-apple-s-
bigge...](https://medium.com/@mg/there-s-a-chat-for-that-apple-s-biggest-
platform-opportunity-yet-19d5b1870857)

[2] [http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/8/1/app-
unbundling-s...](http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/8/1/app-unbundling-
search-and-discovery)

[3] [http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-
first/](http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/)

[4] [http://vurb.com](http://vurb.com)

~~~
jonnycowboy
You mean like email? Email is still used for just about everything: "instant"
messaging, to-do lists, appointments, letters, bills, etc.

SMS could do most of that as well, and if you add an "AI" messager it could be
pretty powerful. That said, an "AI" email interface would be just as useful.

~~~
viksit
@jonnycowboy - Email integration is already on the cards for Myra.

Especially in things that are defer-able - for instance, in needing to do
things like scheduling food delivery for 8pm via doordash, where you don't
want to change from "work and email mode" to "pull out my phone to text" mode.

------
kevin
Alright so the first hiccup I rant into was when you sent me a postscript
telling me that using WhatsApp or Facebook messenger is a better experience.
Well, I wanted better so I started going down that path. Unfortunately, I
didn’t know how to do that. Naturally, I asked you.

[http://cl.ly/image/3k2U1c0i372d](http://cl.ly/image/3k2U1c0i372d)

And that didn’t work. Then I tried clicking on Messenger link on your site.

[http://cl.ly/image/0L1L1T3w0F1P](http://cl.ly/image/0L1L1T3w0F1P)

But none of those are links. And then I tried your FAQ.

[http://www.getmyra.co/faq](http://www.getmyra.co/faq)

And I didn’t really find it. Messaging ‘Help’ didn’t really help. The problem
is probably generational and I’m just too old for that feature, but it might
be nice to make it easier for old dummies like me. I did, however, finally
figure it out. You go to people in the Messenger app and then you + someone,
which prompts for a phone number.

[http://cl.ly/image/3g0e2x3Y1z3W](http://cl.ly/image/3g0e2x3Y1z3W)

This then sent me down the same signup flow and ultimately told me I can’t
reuse the same email address.

[http://cl.ly/image/3G0r1C2K2R36](http://cl.ly/image/3G0r1C2K2R36)

Based on that message, I wasn’t sure whether I type in a new email address or
type restart. I try the email first.

You then reintroduce yourself and ask for my first name again. I give it
again. And then you ask me for my email again. And do that again. And then you
say thanks for signing up and give me that postscript about using Facebook for
a better experience.

Unfortunately, I stopped there and honestly, I would have stopped a lot
sooner. Please note that you sent me down this route and in the end it didn’t
feel like a better experience. In fact, based on what I saw, it doesn’t seem
like you know whether I was on FB or not.

Basically, be really careful of your recommendations to users on your signup
flow. If you present a fork, you should follow it yourself to see how that
changes things. I’m going to come back and play with this some more after I
get through some other Show HNs, because I love talking to bots! It looks like
you have a lot of feedback already. If I have some more unique feedback, I’ll
post it as a reply to here. Thanks!

~~~
viksit
@kevin - Thanks for the detailed feedback! Appreciate it.

The sign up flow messaging could definitely use more work and I'll be sure to
incorporate your feedback into it. One fix would be to be to simply ask for
the email again as opposed to restarting the whole flow.

I just debugged what happened with the double signup BTW. Basically, an issue
with FB Messenger is that not everyone associates their phone number with FB.
If thats the case, Myra gets your FB account ID and not your phone number when
you sign up. And as a result - it can't figure out you're the same user. Need
to figure out how to fix that. Suggestions welcome actually.

~~~
kevin
Use the email address. Send me a link to verify to connect the two.

------
asimjalis
Looks like this has some bugs. It is trapped in a loop. It asks me for my
email address. When I send it it asks me again: “Hello, myaddress@gmail.com.
Almost done. Please enter your email address. You'll never get spam - this is
to ensure I can create a profile for you.”

~~~
viksit
Ah. No thats not a bug and sorry for the inconvenience.

It expects you to type your _name_ again followed by your _email_. Basically,
if something went wrong, you need to type both the name and email again from
first principles - it's not waiting for just the email. Did I explain it
right?

It's something that we would like to fix going forward.

Edit: Happy to sync offline in case I can help you further.

------
mongodude
Nice app !! This looks promising as people were raising concerns how much the
magics or operators of the world can scale relying on humans to answer your
queries. I'm interested to know more about tech involved in building this. You
said it uses Deep Learning for NLP, but can you elaborate as what type of
neural networks you have used like Recursive or Recurrent Neural networks or
any other open source technologies that you find useful. I also liked your
approach of scaling gradually by restricting the scope of queries that myra
can answer.

~~~
viksit
Thank you for the feedback. Yes - I think of it as the 80/20 use case - humans
are great for the long tail, but there is no good reason not to automate the
top 80% of the use cases first.

The tech is evolving. Recurrent NNs, word embeddings. Standard python
libraries mostly. Nvidia CUDA backend for speed.

------
viksit
PS, it's interesting that CS224d : Deep Learning for NLP is trending at the
same time as Myra. A lot of stuff is common to both - for instance, the topic
on Recurrent neural nets for word embedding.

There are a bunch of very nice NL related experiments I've tried that are
waiting in ipython notebooks, that we would love to experiment with here in
production. If anyone here is interested in working on problems that relate to
NLP/Deep Learning, and doing so with millisecond response times, at scale -
you know what to do :)

~~~
vinitagr
Have you seen luka.ai they have been doing it for quite a while. Doing
something very similar.

~~~
varunmittal
Myra is great. I am trying to get the app on my iPad. We are at a much early
stage right now. What we have is a context understanding system.

[http://crrnt.is:8080/?q=god](http://crrnt.is:8080/?q=god)

This query should be able to summarize well. It will be great if we can
collabrate on data sharing at some level.

~~~
varunmittal
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10064049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10064049)
for if there is anything you would like to ask or know about what we have
done.

------
criddell
Does anybody remember I Want Sandy? That was the first product of this type
that really worked well for me.

~~~
viksit
Absolutely - I tried it! I think the ability to interact with a service in a
manner reserved for other humans makes it a more intimate (and arguably
natural) experience.

The main motivation behind Myra is that it maintains conversational context -
so you can ask questions and follow up with it without leaving that context.

Eg: "Find me a restaurant" and "Show me what people say about it".

Just like you would when speaking to a person - and one of the things that
most (all?) other AI assistants out there lack.

~~~
mongodude
Interesting point and I think that's where the strength of Deep Learning based
chatbot automation lies as compared to more traditional approach of using
regex and heuristics to build chatbot like AIML or Bruce Wilcox's Rose.

------
mluskind
Would love to play with it in Toronto - hope it gets here soon!

~~~
viksit
@mluskind - Absolutely. Phasing out launch as you might imagine.

~~~
mluskind
+1 you should start taking email sign-ups. Would be nice to get notified when
it expands to this market.

~~~
viksit
Great idea. In fact, you could sign up right now - and get notified via your
phone/email when it launches too. There will soon be non-location specific
functionality available.

------
xtagon
Mind if I ask how you go about the natural language processsing? Is it using
something such as Wit.ai?

~~~
viksit
Of course. I thought about using wit.ai a few months ago, but I found a lot of
issues in how they approach parsing and classification. Specifically, training
it is a very manual process, and customization and tweaking is very hard.

I've built my own API which can do entity and language parsing. It relies on
utilizing word embeddings (such as those described here:
[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1310.4546.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1310.4546.pdf)).

~~~
xtagon
Thank you. Very interesting!

------
DLarsen
Just a small design note: the white on green is pretty hard to read. (Maybe
it's just my monitor or I'm getting old.) I'm assuming that image goes a long
way to explain how it works, so legibility is paramount.

~~~
viksit
Thanks for the feedback! Absolutely - that was actually a screenshot from the
iphone messages app. I tried to replace green with blue with not the best
results :) Ive introduced the "Examples" section at the bottom though.

------
Tyguy7
I just asked Myra for a breakfast suggestion, and she told me to go to a laser
hair removal specialist... don't think it's quite ready.

~~~
viksit
Whoops. What was your exact query? I haven't found that wide of a difference.
Worth debugging :)

------
milkmanjr
The rise of SMS based apps is very real.

This one looks cool though. Would love to try it when/if it rolls out to Los
Angeles.

~~~
_-__---
is this the return of smarterchild?

~~~
viksit
Well, only to the point where it can answer your queries. Myra aims to be
actually useful ;)

But jokes apart - I think that using apps on the phone is like using bookmarks
in 1999. Why do we have single purpose "links" that allow you to a few things,
that you need to remember? What is indexing all of these services, and
allowing you to get them on demand, just by expressing intent? Almost a search
engine - but one that actually gets things done, rather than just displaying
information.

------
Vervious
I can't for the life of me figure out how to text that number with FB
Messenger... am I missing something?

~~~
viksit
Sadly, Facebook's interface is badly done. Here's how.

(1) Go to the "People" tab [1]

(2) Click the "+" Icon on the top right [2]

(3) Add the phone number you want to message. [3]

[Reference Images]

[1] [https://scontent.fsnc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/hphotos-
xfa1/t39.2229...](https://scontent.fsnc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/hphotos-
xfa1/t39.2229-6/11057205_811327762249445_134335154_n.jpg)

[2] [https://scontent.fsnc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/hphotos-
xap1/v/t1.0-9...](https://scontent.fsnc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/hphotos-
xap1/v/t1.0-9/63389_10100911105683704_2333739306633489204_n.jpg?oh=98fe2a8c8d69bedc44d59bd9c066e59c&oe=563C5AC3)

[3] [https://scontent.fsnc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/hphotos-
xft1/v/t1.0-9...](https://scontent.fsnc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/hphotos-
xft1/v/t1.0-9/11745840_10100911105688694_5623577466217249603_n.jpg?oh=ab92ff3c923ba9d5a63bfa7624651327&oe=567AD46C)

------
tylercarlson
I have used a texting service (free) I saw on product hunt. It is great I
think they have found the right touch of Ai + human interaction. I could be
completely mistaking but I believe there is a human interacting to some
extent.

------
ahazred8ta
"THAT HELPS YOU FIND PLACES TO GO OUT TO"

Yeah... kindly make that visible UP TOP without having to visit the FAQ. A lot
of us use personal assistants to do stuff that doesn't involve venues, dining,
retail, or geolocation.

~~~
viksit
Thanks for the feedback!

What would you like this assistant to do that would be more useful?

------
Qwl
viksit, at sameroom.io we are building real-time messaging gateway system
(currently adding FB, Telegram and Whatsapp).

Would you be interested in us opening a generic API to apps like yours so we
handle all protocol differences?

~~~
viksit
That would be very interesting! Ping me offline? (username at gmail)

------
prateekgupta05
Very cool. Would love to see Myra expand scope beyond restaurants and place.

~~~
viksit
Thank you! That's on the cards.

------
mark_l_watson
Question: it cost about $0.03 per SMS message, right? This seems like a large
business overhead compared to web apps.

Are there less expensive ways to send 10s of thousands of SMS messages per
month?

I think this is a very cool idea.

~~~
viksit
Thank you for the feedback!

Yes, you're right about the sms overhead. The way to mitigate that is to offer
this on every platform which supports text that uses a web connection. Hence
the focus on fb messenger, whatsapp and others apart from sms.

------
redwood
When will we see a gender neutral name for an assistant app?

~~~
viksit
I thought a LOT about that. It's much harder than I thought it would be. That
said - I think there's scope for having two names for a service. Myer and
Myra? :) Just thinking out loud.

------
viksit
Question for developers : Would you like to see a Myra API and if so, what
kind of features would you want/what kind of app would you build with it?

------
bitcuration
The first question I asked is current temperature, and it kept to feed me some
show reservation schedule and yelp reviews.

This is a bit retarded.

~~~
viksit
@bitcuration - thanks for trying it out :)

As the welcome page mentions, it currently only answers queries around
restaurant recommendations/reservations, and the logistics around them -
reviews/times/menus. It would be great if you tried that out. As the system
becomes more intelligent and location aware, I'm hoping it will get to
answering broader questions such as yours.

------
dumbfounder
Why is it limited to San Fran right now?

~~~
viksit
@dumbfounder - it crawls data for its recommendations. In order to maintain
quality and make sure it's useful, I've limited its scope for the time being.
More locations are coming soon!

~~~
donall
FYI, you can use Factual.com to get location data for all kinds of businesses.
You'll still need to source reviews from somewhere else, but this might be a
useful way of ensuring you have good coverage.

(disclaimer: I work at Factual, but a) I'm commenting as an individual, not
representing the company; b) I genuinely think this is a good choice for you;
c) for a small app like this, the data will likely be free, so I have no
financial motivation!)

~~~
viksit
That's a great suggestion @donall. I'm already crawling the web for
information and not just reviews, but the location database would be awesome.
Is there a specific class of program you guys have for free data?

~~~
donall
You can get free access to the API, capped at 10K requests per day. Hopefully
that is enough to be useful at this initial stage!

After that, I think pricing depends on your app. I think it is extremely
favourable to small/new startups, but I am am engineer and not a sales guy, so
I don't want to say anything that might be both specific and wrong... (I hope
this isn't starting to sound like a bait and switch sales pitch; if you want
to talk offline my gmail is donallmc).

[Edited to update email]

~~~
viksit
Thanks @donall. Will ping you offline.

------
hagope
my problem with this type of app is that all of these capabilities are already
handled faster/easier by other native apps without having to type out a full
sentence of what I want....ie Google now (esp with voice search), yelp, uber,
4sq etc etc

~~~
viksit
BTW. Not everything needs to be a full sentence. And using the voice input on
your phone, this can take voice input too.

For instance, "happy hour near mission" works as well as "Whats a good happy
hour in the mission that has craft beer".

The thing is - would you rather figure the right app, find it on your phone,
open it, wait for it to load, do a search, and have it take an action - and
then use the next app to take the next one?

Or simply have a layer that does it transparently?

------
xigency
From the example, I have to wonder, how quickly does that go through tinyurl
links?

~~~
viksit
Agreed - I haven't had time to build my own url shortener yet :) Hopefully not
too quickly.

~~~
xigency
Well, there's an exponential number of them, so you should be fine.

------
comrade1
The FCC has been cracking down on companies using long codes for SMS services
because those long codes aren't required to follow the normal SMS rules
concerning opting in, opting out, opt less keywords (help messages). For short
codes the phone companies each test the short code to confirm it's following
the rules.

Further, these long codes switch companies frequently as they get reused when
they're no longer in use, and SMS user numbers have been spammed with sms
messages as a result.

~~~
viksit
Makes sense. Notably, however, this is an alpha product, very much a way to
see user engagement and figure out what works and what doesn't, and what
people want it to do. Once those questions are clarified, all the rest of the
infrastructure will definitely be built up adhering to established standards.

In that respect, it absolutely makes sense to use a shortcode where you can
conform to regulations.

It's important to note though that Myra _only_ responds when asked for
information, and _never_ without. So, it makes sure not to spam at all.

~~~
mikeash
On the spam thing, I believe what they're saying is that companies set up a
service, then they disappear, the phone number they used gets reassigned to
some Joe Random, and then poor hapless Joe gets spammed by all the company's
former customers who think the number is still hooked up.

