How could AI be used in a future version of XenForo?

FTL

Well-known member
AI is all the rage nowadays and is going into everything, including Microsoft Office, soon. This has me wondering how AI tech could be used to enhance the functionality of a future XenForo. Self-writing posts by AI users could be one I guess, to help startup forums out of their natural catch-22, perhaps. Doing this could be seen as underhand or fake, though.

Let's hear your AI ideas. Who know, perhaps some of them might become part of a future XF.
 
I think its only a matter of a short time til every editor has "rephrase" or "improve" right next to the smiley button.
 
AI for better 'Similar threads', predictive search, any kind of search, thesaurus, phrasing^, translating... the list is endless.
 
AI for better 'Similar threads', predictive search, any kind of search, thesaurus, phrasing^, translating... the list is endless.
Seriously, if you can think of a few creative examples, I'd love to hear them! :)

Keep the ideas coming people, this is fascinating. :cool:
 
There’s a technique that I’ve been working on in my 9to5 to use a LLM with my own knowledge base (for example, my forum posts) and generate text based on that context for anything you need such as a question solver. It’s some sort of Retrieval Augmented Generation and it might be useful for forums because, different from generating text without context, this method uses the model with your own context which happens to be particularly useful.

A few ideas from the top of my head:

  • Search engine for your forum with natural language (RAG)
  • Spam management
  • Automated email marketing (RAG)
  • Text translation
  • Bot to reply to support threads (RAG)
  • Game copilot (for role based forums for example and with the context of the game)
  • Auto moderator for specific use cases - for example if you need certain posts to include a piece of information, let’s say the warranty details in a classifieds forum, you can auto moderate it with an LLM.

The list could go on. What I don’t agree with is to use it as a bot to post messages in your forum without any context whatsoever.
 
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In addition to everything people already mentioned, you could also have a text to image system for people wanting to post images of something abstract (not a specific image of something), as well as letting users use it for avatar and profile banner creation (my avatar here is from AI image generation).

I wish a had a use case that could justify the cost of running my own AI/machine learning rig, because it would be super fun to mess with.

The problem is this rig is about $250,000:


Then then it has 8x 3000W power supplies (it needs 4 to stay on, and 4 more for full redundancy). So the cost of 2x 240V, 60A circuits in a data center adds a pretty significant monthly power cost to keep it on as well.
 
Content discovery!

An "intelligent" cross-content-type newsfeed-like system, that shows what the user is really interested in.
 
The whole thing of allowing AI on your forums is hopeless.
go to social media and it is on there annoying the crap out of us.
imagine you getting phone calls. This already happens
 
It'd be nice to have AI read your categories and descriptions, then suggest where to post a thread during the creation process to avoid mis categorization.

Or have a batch process that runs on older threads and does the same thing, queuing up alerts to help you move stuff to the most appropriate place. This would be super helpful for very old forums.
 
Sorry to revive this thread, but here is are a couple more AI ideas that could be useful for forum owners:

AI-generated META Description tags
Use AI to auto-generate META description for threads, overriding the default snippet that gets clipped as of now. There could be a cron job that runs to update threads with new replies to summarize the thread description as the thread grows. Or maybe make it so that simply stays static based on a summary of the first post. We all know that the first sentence or two of a post might not always be a good description of a thread. I realize Google sometimes chooses what to show for the description in the SERPs, but regardless, this could still be valuable.

AI-generated thread title suggestions on thread creation
Many users tend to post threads with less-than-descriptive thread titles. Which means they don't always show up in the search results. Would be nice to be able to suggest a better thread title when the user clicks the "Post Thread" button after they typed up their post. AI could scan the post and suggest a more engaging title for them to use, which maybe they can decline if they like.

These would make pretty cool add-ons.
 
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I've set up AI on my Xenforo in these ways so far:
  • Subscribers get access to a Reply With ChatGPT button that writes a reply for them that they can use as the basis for their reply to any selected post.
  • Bots can activate for certain keywords and post AI-written replies using a set of instructions, for example: "in this roleplaying post you play the part of 3 hostile robots that attack the player character."
Unfortunately the author of the Add-ons I use has stopped developing for Xenforo and is currently fleeing from Ukraine to avoid military service.
 
There is a big problem with the KI.
She lies, she guesses, she tries something that might be somewhat similar. Don't believe it? Then ask the AI about addons that do something with threads via Cronjob. You'll immediately get responses with completely incorrect URLs to xenforo.com.

 
AI-generated thread title suggestions on thread creation
Many users tend to post threads with less-than-descriptive thread titles. Which means they don't always show up in the search results. Would be nice to be able to suggest a better thread title when the user clicks the "Post Thread" button after they typed up their post. AI could scan the post and suggest a more engaging title for them to use, which maybe they can decline if they like.
https://devsell.io/products/chatgpt-title-corrector.34/ 😲🤘
 
Sorry to revive this thread, but here is are a couple more AI ideas that could be useful for forum owners:

AI-generated META Description tags
Use AI to auto-generate META description for threads, overriding the default snippet that gets clipped as of now. There could be a cron job that runs to update threads with new replies to summarize the thread description as the thread grows. Or maybe make it so that simply stays static based on a summary of the first post. We all know that the first sentence or two of a post might not always be a good description of a thread. I realize Google sometimes chooses what to show for the description in the SERPs, but regardless, this could still be valuable.

AI-generated thread title suggestions on thread creation
Many users tend to post threads with less-than-descriptive thread titles. Which means they don't always show up in the search results. Would be nice to be able to suggest a better thread title when the user clicks the "Post Thread" button after they typed up their post. AI could scan the post and suggest a more engaging title for them to use, which maybe they can decline if they like.

These would make pretty cool add-ons.

I second that.
 
AI generated add on builds.

It can already spit out simple XenForo add on builds.

I made one by telling it to make everyone's signature X on install and then revert back to their original signature on disable/uninstall, and then I think I refined it to only change signatures for users of a specific user group. Obviously, I didn't have anything specific in mind, but it just went to show that it understands XF architecture already and could be used to make simple add ons, to even more complex ones provided the correct description.

I would have to play with it more next time I need a simple add on to see if it can deliver, then see if a developer could audit it to ensure it works, if it's too complex for me to understand myself.

By the signature example, it knows not to run direct queries, but I can't recall if they were clean (to prevent injection, etc.).

Edit: Read the thread title wrong, but a lot of the suggestions here, AI could implement in the current XF version by creating an add on for it — like use Chat GPT API (if it can respond with images) to generate an avatar based on the username chosen, save it, and let them edit it later if they want, as opposed to the default Letter for the one with no avatar set.
 
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