Show HN: Aiko – Talk to Your Japanese Tutor AI, Powered by XAI and Polly
japanesecomplete.comHey HN! I’m pumped to share Aiko, my Japanese tutor AI—learning Japanese should feel like chatting with a friend. Check it out at https://japanesecomplete.com/aiko.html —no signup needed for the demo!
Aiko uses xAI’s Grok (latest model) to craft natural Japanese replies and AWS Polly (Mizuki voice) to speak them. Pick a topic like "Greetings" or "Ordering Food," hit "Click to Record," and talk to her in Japanese—she listens via Web Speech API, responds, and plays it back. It’s real-time, with a mic level visualizer and auto-scrolling chat, all in client-side JS (React + Tailwind).
This ties into my Japanese Complete project (data-driven, 90% real-world Japanese coverage). Sold a $450 lifetime plan this morning, so I figured it’s HN time. Next up: server-side polish, auth, and more topics. Would love your take—especially on UX or scaling ideas!
This submitter under other usernames sova and cushpush, have been promoting their japanesecomplete site since 2019 (https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=japanesecomplete.com) and miso site since 2023 (https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=miso.beehiiv.com) against the HN guidelines on self-promotion. Turning on "showdead" reveals more of the history for those interested.
Also, there are four previous postings under the sova account, so this is not exactly new. Show HN is not for advertising products.
- Aiko: Learn Japanese Effortlessly, with MMLM-Powered Digital Sensei (japanesecomplete_com/aiko-announcement) 2 points | sova | 1 year ago
- Aiko, learn Japanese rapidly with her help (japanesecomplete_com/aiko-announcement) 1 points | sova | 1 year ago
- Aiko: MMLM (Multimodal Language Model)-Powered Digital Sensei for Japanese (japanesecomplete_com/articles/?p=1574) 3 points | sova | 1 year ago
- Aiko – A New Wave in Learning Japanese – AI-Powered Digital Sensei (japanesecomplete_com/articles/?p=1536) 6 points | sova | 1 year ago
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You can use the product for free at the link I shared for Show HN. It is true this is incorporated into the broader lesson plan now, but initially I had just worked it out as a demo and was excited to show it to the community. I appreciate your vigilance although can't help but think it's misplaced.
how are users' voice recordings handled? Any guarantees about storage duration, privacy, etc.?
Voice recordings are turned to text via in-browser Speech-to-Text (STT the opposite of TTS) and then piped / sent to Grok as text. These are privately sent via my API key to Grok. I don't hold on to them at all except for sending them over the wire to Grok. So storage duration on our side is as minimal as possible, typically just a few seconds while it is sent to Grok and a reply is formulated. However, one should be aware that the whole conversation is sent to Grok from within our lesson pages, so the whole chat persists for a session until you close out the tab or move to another lesson page, at which point it is reset.