Can we all agree that whatever version of predictive text we have nowadays is crap, and has been for a long time?

I'm sick of random capitalisations mid sentence. I'm sick of common words being replaced by less common ones or even downright nonsense. I'm sick of it taking three attempts to successfully get the word I want. I swear it's been like this for five years or more. Can we have a better version yet, or at least the old one back?

rottingleaf ,

People love to hate Rowling, but her descriptions of magic are very perceptive as predictions of computing.

Like in this case. Both Skeeter with her magic quill (LLM as it is) and the spell-checking quills (I think Ron liked that he could write much faster with those at first, so either he's as smart as a neanderthal, or they "improve" not only orthography).

And Snape's invented spells and how he doesn't really like their popularity remind me of script-kiddies.

I think I've read a fanfic where Hogwarts was converted into some kind of a "school for hackers" (in that early 00s spirit, think Lara Croft and Spy Kids movies). The universe was generally the same, only magic was replaced with that.

TomatoSlayer ,

... What?

rottingleaf ,

What what?

I really don't get people who express their inability to understand something without a specific question. As if being dumb were something to be proud of.

EDIT: Sorry, was thinking of an unpleasant thing.

TomatoSlayer ,

This thread is about predictive typing and your post was so barely tangentially related as to be a non-sequitur. So again I ask: What?

rottingleaf ,

and your post was so barely tangentially related as to be a non-sequitur

Which is your opinion, not accompanied with anything to help me care. Again, if a certain connection or association is real, but still feels out of place for you, then the problem is likely with yourself and doesn't concern me.

BlastboomStrice ,
@BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz avatar

I dont like autocorrect both for privacy reasons (though there might be open source ones) and for accuracy reasons. I dont want something else to write for me what it thinks I want to say. (Hence I'm using a customized keyboard in florisboard beta which looks almost the same as gboard.😌)

JohnEdwa ,
@JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz avatar

Predictive text is literally the one thing LLM AI would be the best at, and for some reason we don't seem to use it for it.

arin ,

Takes too much energy(wattage used by gpu/cpu) to get decent AI results compared to current predictive text methods

random8847 ,

It would be slow as fuck though if you want it in real time typing.

viralJ ,

I actually can't complain. It's not perfect, but I'm far from being as outraged as the OP. I used to love SwiftKey, it was amazing with text prediction, even when you had two languages on at the same time (I'm bilingual, so it was really handy). Since Microsoft bought it, it started going downhill and when I found that I can't just transfer my settings when I get a new phone, I switched to Gboard. Again, not perfect, but not terrible either. I will try out some of the recommendation from this thread though.

Siegfried ,

I don't have as much trouble with text prediction as with the existent dictionaries for my native language. "Español rioplatense" (argentina, uruguay) exists as an option for many programs and devices but for some reason, it is just a copy from "español de españa". This means, it is constantly trying to correct things that were correct on the first place.

I blame this on american racism and their small view of the world.

Also, i usually write in three languages and text prediction is pretty useful.

cosmicrookie ,
@cosmicrookie@lemmy.world avatar

Especially as multilingual it is a mess!
It didn't use to be this bad!

ArdMacha ,

It's worse when you are not multilingual! I am in Ireland and keep getting Spanish words predicted. I am not in Spain or California, why?

cosmicrookie ,
@cosmicrookie@lemmy.world avatar

Dude... i've been thinking about your reply here a lot since you made it, and trying to understand. Why is it worse for you than for multilingual users?

Its not like i can use Spanish suggestions better than you just because i speak more than 1 language.

I dont even speak Spanish but even if i did, i couldn't use the Spanish suggestions when writing English or any other language

ArdMacha ,

Neither can I.

n3m37h ,

HTC had one of the best keyboards. Each key had 2 letters on each key (except 1 or 2 that had 3) and it never failed to guess what word I wanted. Stopped working with android 4 IIRC.

Found it on a XDA thread from 2010

Sadly still doesn't work

akilou ,

I disagree. I've been using SwiftKey for years and it's decent. It's by no means mind blowing, especially given the current state of affairs with LLMs, but it's not crap.

Tippon ,

Strongly disagree. I'm using SwiftKey, and the prediction has been awful for the last year or so. It constantly tries to force sentences on me and gives me multiple repeated words.

As an example, typing that last sentence, every time I started a word with 'm', it suggested 'more' and 'more than'. If I long press and tell it not to suggest 'more than', then select 'more', the next suggested word is 'than'.

I find that it often repeats the selected word too. Earlier I typed something like 'I did it last year' and the next suggestions were 'year' and 'year ago'.

Microsoft have shoehorned a predictive AI into SwiftKey, and it doesn't work properly.

hobovision ,

Hmm I wonder if we just have different settings for it or use it differently. I mostly use SwiftKey these days as a fix for my terrible typing, rather than as predictive text. The predictive text is pretty bad in my opinion, but I'll tell you what SwiftKey thinks about itself below.

(prompt in bold) SwiftKey predictive text is not associated to my records and the other two phases are slack and the other two phases are slack and the other two phases are slack (end of predictions)

It seems Microsoft hasn't added GPT to it yet... Can't even remember the last time I talked about slack.

ptz ,
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

I miss T-9 and physical buttons. I could type out War and Peace with maybe one typo without looking at my phone once. The on-screen keyboards we've had the last ~17 years have been a huge downgrade, IMO.

Odelay42 ,

My friend, I am also slightly nostalgic for the optimism and novelty of the flip phone days. I could text confidently with T9 inside a hoodie pocket during class. But my good friend there is no universe where I want to go back to T9 for the convenience and effectiveness of it. It is not quick compared to anything that came after.

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