XenForo AI roadmap?

[back]

Now with all the AI hype, I wonder what do XF use to enhance their product with using AI? I can imagine the search capabilities can be enhanced as example with using external AI.

 

[Digital Doctor]

I hope we're referring to the same implementation

search for what you want here with Xenforo's own search.



vs. a google search.

 

[ebikes.com]

I've implemented AI on my forum through my exclusive partnership with Xpertloop, using their API, which is using open.ai / GPT5.

[edit: Importantly, we had Xpertloop ingest my forum's content, so that it can provide responses prioritized with my forum's content, and if not enough context is provided, it falls back on ChatGPT (other models can be used as the backup, e.g. Claude, etc). I can set up multiple agents for different topics, but for now I just have one general agent to set tone, tenor, rules and formats, etc.]

I am thinking about packaging the solution as an addon, and offering onboarding and ongoing support.

Okay but what does it do with AI? saying you integrated AI leaves that question.

Also because AI can get really expensive, the solution should work with localhosted models.
I can run something 90% as good as Deepseek R1 on a single 5090 ( bytedance Seed OSS 36B ) as of today, i don't see why i'd want to give a copy of my forum to a third party provider if i can just run a GPU and get inference for a lot less.

 

[tonmo]

I described what it does in the quoted text; basically I have setup a user (octobot) which responds when tagged by users who are in the Supporter user group (or Staff).

No argument that it could be done locally for self-use. Not sure how pragmatic it would be to set it up to have it function for your community's users, but it'd involve internet traffic so I think yours is a different use case from what I described.

Xpertloop is a startup comprised of people I had worked with for many years. As for my data, their service ingests it and is used solely for my purposes. The data they have is essentially what has been scrape-able by Google and other such robots (ie. public posts).

Another feature that I didn't mention in my other post is that when Octobot is tagged, the last N posts in the thread are sent along to the API so that the system has adequate context on the discussion and can respond intelligently (along with the post itself which contained the tag and query, of course). I think I've set it to 5 posts.

I'm not a developer but I essentially created my part of the script through vibe-coding (using mostly Grok but Xpertloop does offer its admins it's own private instance for such tasks as well). Stuff like, only respond when Octobot is tagged by a Supporter, ignore quoted text, and send the last 5 posts in the thread for any context, etc. It's a cloudflare worker script currently (also using XF API and webhooks) but I'd like to see if I can make it an add-on for others to use (vs CF worker). By making it an add-on, I could help others with Xpertloop onboarding, etc.

Xpertloop typically works with authors and other such content owners; I am working with them as it relates to forum discussion systems. Personally I believe this is the right kind of AI stepping stone needed for forums.

 

[ebikes.com]

My bad for not reading the quoted text - didn't expect details to be there.
Okay, i get it. This is kind of like how you can tag Grok on X. But users have to pay for it.

How is uptake?

 

[tonmo]

exactly, like the Grok feature. I originally had a button next to the share icons in each post but just tagging octobot works best.

Users are generally skeptical, but accepting. As mentioned, I don't mind the slow adoption. It's definitely experimental. Getting the agent right is crucial. I'm thinking it's in a good place right now but need to test further without creating noise. I can test outside of my production site of course, but thread context and all that is a bit tedious to recreate, so I'm just casually working it in when it feels natural to do so.