Textpert analyses advice to build AI agony aunt
Los Angeles-based start-up Textpert has launched a mobile app for users looking for romantic advice. Already available on iOS and on Android from 2017, the machine-learning system analyses the data as users offer anonymous advice on relationships. CEO and Founder Ray Christian is now working on a natural-language processing layer for Textpert, which took part in UCLA's recent summer accelerator programme.
In 2028, as you lie back on your retro-futuristic couch and spill your guts to your disembodied, artificially intelligent, cloud-based therapist service, you might want to thank mobile app Textpert. Because in 2016, Textpert crowdsourced countless questions about love, and a lot of helpful answers from anonymous bystanders, to build a deep database about affairs of the heart.

On the surface, Textpert looks like another mobile app that provides either wise counsel or pure entertainment, depending on your current relationship status. But deep inside, Textpert is sourcing, sorting, analyzing, doing A/B testing and categorizing it all for the future. PCMag met Ray Christian, CEO and founder of Textpert, in Los Angeles to find out what inspired him to create the service.

"Unsurprisingly, it started with heartbreak," he tells PCMag. "I'd been dating this woman—she was smart, funny, beautiful—I was smitten. But I couldn't get to that third date; my texts and calls were ignored. I thought, 'maybe I'm off my game? Maybe she's out of my league?' I just didn't know what was going on.

"Then I sat down with my sister one afternoon. I handed her my phone and said, 'Help me out.' She ghostwrote a couple of texts, and the woman wrote back instantly, saying: 'I want to see you tonight.' It was on."

Putting aside the notion that Ray's sister might well have a career as a relationship coach or writer of Hollywood romantic comedies ahead of her, the moral of the tale is that it takes one to know one. When decoding the behavior of the opposite sex, reinforcements are required.

"I knew there was a business in giving anonymous and helpful advice to relationship woes," Christian says. "I knew other people needed access to this."

Textpert was refined at UCLA's recent summer accelerator program, which is where PCMag saw Christian pitch his company to potential investors; it was clear the machine intelligence aspect caught their attention.

Textpert launched on iOS this year; an Android version arrives in early 2017. It's free to use; just sign up using your phone number or Facebook login. Then post your relationship question or answer queries from other users. You decide whether responses will be public or private, and wait for the advice to roll in.

Surprisingly, answers are largely helpful. "The community pretty much self-monitors, which is great," Christian says. "Users will jump in instantly and say, 'Hey! This isn't Yik Yak, or [the now-defunct] Secret, stick to the topic!' and it all flows pretty smoothly from there."

The next stage, however, is "where it gets exciting," Christian says.

"We're building out the Natural Language Processing layer, that's going in very soon. It'll be reading all the posts, pulling out keywords, structuring specific queries and advice built on weighted responses [the community votes up and down on everything], and starting to understand which—and why—is the best advice."

You can see how machine intelligence would work in this scenario; there's a vast amount of data coming in on how humans interrelate—the very stuff AI needs to know. Yes, some pretty intense subjects are discussed. Nothing more gruesome than elsewhere on the Internet, but unlike darker corners of the digital realm, Textpert's users are actually taking the time to give advice, sharing their experience and providing decent solutions. The platform's proprietary scoring structure then goes in and ranks it. Interestingly enough, there does appear to be consensus on what to do when [insert whatever awful relationship drama you can imagine] happens.

"I knew we were onto something when the advice seemed to tally within the community. Plus, I wanted to make something more than just another social network," Christian says.

"Apart from the current big ones, most [other social networks] seem to rise and fall and disappear. It has to have more utility. Why do we continue to fall in love, pair off, have children, get careers? To survive as a species. To pass on collective knowledge, through our DNA, through experience. So then I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could store all that knowledge about doing all those things to help people—not just now, but in the future [and] get through life a bit easier?' And that's the utility in Textpert."

So there you have it. When you're lying on that couch in 2028 moaning about why X hasn't returned your intergalactic encoded Valentine video message, and your AI therapist suggests a re-think, it might be because thousands of co-eds in California back in 2016 agreed on a much cooler approach and Ray Christian's sister wrote some way better dialogue.