cmuguythrow

Hey HN, we're Patrick and Thomas and are building an app that uses generative video to teach languages (currently Mandarin only).

Background: We think the "Comprehensible Input" theory of language learning has a lot of merit - TL;DR: consume native content that you can understand a high % of and pick everything else up as you go with context. For more detail see https://refold.la/roadmap/ or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis However, it is quite difficult to find content that is interesting to you, at your level, and in a format you can study it. Generative AI can help bridge this content gap.

What we've built: An AI video agent that takes your vocab level and a short prompt and spits out a ~2-minute video. The video will have dialogue that is 85% comprehensible at the given vocab level, making learning the remaining 15% of new words easier and more effective.

For example, this video was generated with a 2,150 word vocab and the prompt “Bringing a pet capybara to the public pool”. https://youtu.be/B7zRNl60hPY

Video Details: From that simple prompt we make a story, break down the characters and environment, write the script and ensure it’s properly levelled, break it down into shots, bring those to life with tts/image/video/lipsync, and stitch it together with music. As far as we can tell, this is the first end-to-end automated story video workflow of its kind, with no manual steps or cherry-picking, no choosing from character templates, etc.

The app is free for watching videos and studying flashcards, and doesn’t require an email to sign up. After the first free video generation, making your own videos is $15/mo for 1 video/day. Excited to hear everyone’s feedback!