Open-source AI app lets users talk with historical figures
The Hacker News post introduces Agora Cosmica, an AI learning service. It lets users have speech-to-speech conversations with AI Echo versions of 30 historical figures. The project code was released under AGPL-3.0, and it is run by a German nonprofit. Speech and transcription are self-hosted, and the service offers 30 free messages.
Key points
- Agora Cosmica is an AI learning service built around 30 historical figures.
- Each figure has 12 narrated stories about their life and teachings.
- Users can talk by voice or bring several figures together to discuss a topic.
- The code is open source under AGPL-3.0, but the content still has separate copyright.
- The post says speech and transcription run on self-hosted Hetzner GPU servers.
Quick term guide
- transcription
- Automatically converting spoken words into a written text file during a meeting.
- transcript
- A full written record of everything spoken in a video
- self-hosted
- Run on your own server instead of managed by another company.
- Solo developer
- An individual who handles all parts of creating a project or product alone.
- developers
- Developers are people who build software, apps, or websites.
- Interface
- The visual parts of a program that a human interacts with.
- open source
- Software whose code is available for people to view and often modify.
- Hetzner GPU servers
- Cloud servers with powerful chips often used for AI tasks like speech generation.