readability

Inspiration

The decline in readership of literature motivated us to come up with a solution that engages readers with classics.

What it does

readability takes in a selected piece of text and returns a visualization of each segment using DALLE 2's Image Generator and GPT-3's text completion. We present the visualization along with the user's passage in an e-reader format.

How we built it

We used Python Flask to run the script. We built the website using Bootstrap, HTML5, and JavaScript and hosted it on Heroku. We wrote the backend in Python and used the openai API to make requests to DALLE and GPT.

Challenges we ran into

We came unprepared, especially with front-end experience. Some of the challenges we ran into were centering images, centering buttons, working with Bootstrap and HTML5, connecting CSS stylesheets to HTML5 indices, incorporating smooth scrolling, z-index (layering), scroll bars, brainstorming...

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We learned all our knowledge of JavaScript, HTML5, and frontend development in general through this project, as the majority of the team had no experience in the area. We are happy to have learned so much in so little time. We are also proud of our project's unique ability to incorporate AI in the humanities. Our teamwork and division of labor on the project were also very efficient.

What we learned

We learned to use multiple libraries and packages for specific situations; however, the most important skills that we cultivated were the ability to break our problem down critically using logic and to query the internet efficiently for the specific information we needed.

What's next for readability

We would like to feed titles into DALLE as context for the art to increase its similarity to the style of the book. We also would like to enable users to specify the kind of art they would like to see, including pixel art, oil painting, and more. Moreover, we see the potential for this project to benefit students much like ourselves as it will enable them to engage with their readings at a much greater depth.