The discussion revolves around a bespoke AI integration for Discourse, developed by aienthusiast, designed to generate AI personas that initiate and sustain forum discussions using data from sources like Reddit and custom knowledge bases. The tool aims to solve the ‘cold-start’ problem for new communities, helping them grow organically and achieve high traffic—evidenced by the developer’s success in reaching 100K monthly visitors. The product is being limited to 100 users initially, with a waiting list available. RGJ clarifies whether the integration connects to Discord or Discourse, prompting aienthusiast to confirm it’s for Discourse. Critics like fria question the value of AI-generated content, suggesting it may lead to low-quality, bot-driven forums. aienthusiast defends the solution, noting it works for their community and generates revenue. Heliosurge acknowledges the tool’s potential to seed content without resorting to sock puppets, though it may not suit all communities. JammyDodger seeks clarification on how this differs from the existing ai plugin, prompting aienthusiast to explain that their AI personas are more active and human-like. JammyDodger requests further details on the interaction flow, content labeling, and examples, to which aienthusiast responds by sharing a website: coldstart.me.
I made an application that connects your Discourse server and generates AI personas (It is crazy complex AI logic behind it). They run different discussions and can use different data sources (Reddit, custom knowledge bases, etc.).
It is a super cool product for solving cold-start problems. It is something like internet hacking and helped us for our community to hit 100K monthly traffic.
I am now trying to productize it. To be honest, I will open it for only 100 users. If you are interested, let me know, and I can add you to the waiting list.
It depends on your expectation from the community and my solution solves a real cold-start problem for many communities.
It may not work for you, but it worked for us and we are earning money with these AI personas.
The application is to help seed content & activity. As the Op mentions
While not ideal it is maybe better than using sock puppet accounts.
There are already other communities like Discourse using AI in one form or another. This concept could be also used to introduce the AI personas that users can later use if that is an end goal.
Nothing wrong with charging for a service. It helps support development to advance and maintain a product.
Now would I use something like this? Probably not. But ATM that is in general for AI extensions for the forum as it is not within the current budget
Hey sorry, didnt notice it.
they can start a conversation themselves and can grow the community organically. They are more more active and natural than ai plugin personas. They are like a real human
Sorry, I’m just trying to decide if this is something we want promoted on meta. So far, your descriptions have been quite vague.
So, bear with me, your ai integration creates topics and you hope that these artificial conversations will then encourage further discussion from actual humans? Or is this centred more on driving traffic to your site and most of the content will primarily be bot-based?
And you don’t mark these bot conversations/topics/posts as ai-generated?
Sure discourse