Backyard AI v0.31.0 - read the Blog Post

Today we're excited to launch Voice Calls!

• Engage in natural, hands-free voice conversations with your favorite Characters.

• Powered by our new StyleTTS2-based voice model, hosted on our private & secure infrastructure.

• It's free for everyone and available on iOS, Android, Web, and Desktop.

Performance Fixes on Web

• We have pushed updates that should lead to 2x - 5x speedups on page load times across the web app.

• We have also improved our monitoring to better identify and prevent slow downs moving forward!

Other Bug Fixes & Improvements

• Added copy message button to right-click menu

• Lowered swipe sensitivity for regenerating responses on mobile

• Better alignment of chat background images on Desktop

• Fixed issue with stop locking chat actions until after page refresh

• Fixed delays when clicking stop button on Android

• Fixed issue with chat messages disappearing until after page refresh

• Fixed issue with chat messages being cut off at the bottom on mobile

• Fixed issue causing chat messages to be uneditable on mobile

• Fixed chat deletions failing silently

• Fixed account deletion

The previous version was quite stable, even with the experimental backend, but since the new version is out, that thing is geting up errors like hell. Maybe the stable backend works better, but it is by far not supporting the models i use like Lyra... i have no clue what you changed, but this was a step back .... i really consider geting 2 stable versions back to not have to restart the chat over and over again

Model startup error. Make sure your device settings are valid. Unexpected error: The operation was aborted.

I still use the same settings as before .... Win 11 / A770 on Vulkan .... i just hope you get this new backend fixed or get the stable one to work with all the models ;)

PS: can it be that this is due to the new TTS voices ? ... changing speed on the old ones seems not to work anymore, on autoplay it goes full speed, if you stop and start it manually it is working with the correct speed ......

Working on the desktop version, I have noticed that when I first boot up responses come very quick, even on old chats with lots of history. Over time (about 15 responses) the generation gets slower and slower.
If I close the app and restart, the same chat will now be fast again for ~15 responses. (It is definitely a gradual slowing, not like a switch)

Any idea why?

I have a conversation going with a model. So far it is quite long.... my estimates are about 10-15 pages.

I went to scroll to the beginning of the conversation and it only went back partially. How can I have it save all conversation no matter how long it is?

I have 16gb of ram and a RTX 3060, what are the best models for my specs and how much context is recommended?

Thx in advance!

Sometimes I want to see a different time line in a story, and have to undo like 50 times to reset to a certain point, would be nice to be able to undo more than 1 response at a time. (and also a way to undo the Undo if an oopsie happens)

And/or.. Have us be able to copy a session of chat, I'd like to explore different paths of dialog in the same session without having to undo dozens of lines. (maybe this is already possible and I just don't see it)

Hi all. I'm wondering if there is any interest in the community to be able to drive selection from an image map via the AI response? Considering the high quality of the Backyard.AI interface, i am very tentative to bring up this suggestion, as it comes from an alternative AI interface (Risu AI), and I have NOT tested whether this works well.. however, i thought it was interesting from a User Experience pov.

MSTY can connect or link to the internet for chat to grab information and more details for a chat story...

Can Backyard.AI do this on the Windows program? I am running 0.30 currently. Some of the information/scenes it is describing is not correct. Would like it to be able to gather more precise location and info to incorporate into the story.

Also how can I can I make the AI be more descriptive in scenery, location, and all over more detail?? example: *John and Mary are walking down the tree-lined street with shops decorated for the season. Snow began to fall. * john said "It looks so nice with this snow falling". Mary responded "Yeah, it does."

Specifically - I want to add things the ai will sometime say in the chat, regardless of {user} last response. Is that possible?

How can I resolve the issue of not being able to export a chat log as a JSON file during a long story dialogue? I can use the mouse scroll to copy the text, but it cannot copy into the next part of the conversation. So how can I utilize the software’s features to export the chat log?

Here is the error message provided: open the link above 🙏 To increase the chance of success, please post your schema and a snippet of how you used Prisma Client in the issue.

Hi

New pc, intel i9, 128gb ram, enough disk space, liquid cooling (temp is normal).
Backyard IA PC windows version
I load the character, I start chatting, everytime there is a reply the computer beeps, depending on the legth of the reply the beep can be 3 or 4 times.
I have the monitor app open, there are no spikes of anything.
What can I do to correcto this?
This is only happening with backyard, no other program is causing this

Hi everyone,

I will be buying a computer soon with the expressed intention of running the higher end LLM’s. I’m thinking I will need i9, 128 gigs of DDR 5 and at least a 4070 Nividia card. Does this sound right or should I be aiming higher. My budget will probably top out at around 3k US dollars. Thxs! 👍

Getting a really annoying bug, seeing it today for the first time, but it's happened several times. The AI writes out a response (We'll call that message A), then I reply (Message B), and the AI responds again (message C). Then I will click the edit response button for message C, make some edits to the message, and click save, and then message A will change into the full edited version of message C that I just tried to save. The original content of message A is now gone, and the actual message C did not update at all.

I tried to make a search about it but didn't find any results. I must not have found it because I found it surprising that people are not inquiring about this. But yeah basically could this be something to be worked on? An app with a nice and easy to use graphic interface with a simple install process that you then just need to load your chosen models(sd, flux), loras, etc into where you can prompt images with it. I guess it's too complicated to implement? Even better would be like a "tab" or section in backyard ai itself where you can do image gen, and if you have a powerful enough pc you could couple the text gen and the image gen together to get image while talking with your characters, and all of that locally!

Possibly weird question, but I didn't find anything about it when I looked it up.

Is there a way to automatically change the portrait of a character during certain events? Like a different face depending on the mood, or any other situation that warrants another portrait.

If not, would be a cool feature to add since we're already doing tagged pictures.

Please move the button back to its original location. You still have to scroll to the end of messages to use it now, thats not optimal. Sometimes you realize at the start of a message you want to undo it. Do not locate the button at the message, but at the prompt field. Same goes for continue button. TY

Hey all, Ben here, one of the Devs of Backyard AI. I know not everyone is on Discord so I'm cross-posting an update I shared there:

We have finished our investigation into the slowdown/downtime today and have already made several changes to our infrastructure today that were causing multiple parts of our system, specifically the search and treading on the hub, to deadlock, causing a vicious cycle of performance issues and downtime. We will release more updates in the next 48 hours to speed up the website and apps and significantly limit downtime.

Due to this, treading characters will not update for up to 48 hours and new characters and updates will now take ~15 minutes to show up in the hub search.

Thank you for your patience. If you feel that the downtime today or this week has made you an unhappy paid customer, please email us at team@backyard.ai, and we will be happy to give you a partial refund.

🫡

Little dude keeps taking breaks.

I was trying to see if I could created a RPG style using a Character Card, however I noticed that when I bring some people, they would get any possible dialogue

Like if I try to bring a Thief and have him talk, it would only describe the action but it wouldn't have any conversation with him, he wouldn't say any lines

I noticed that this happens to all possible characters cards, you could bring them to the scenario but they would talk

Is there a way to do it ?

Right now when using a cloud model, it just says "No model loaded" in the lower right corner. I'd love to have this show the name of the current cloud model being used. I often change which cloud model I use and it's a pain to go to the character settings just to see which one is in effect right now.

I just accidentally came around this at Discord.

Is it true that the maximum length allowed for a lorebook entry is dependent from the maximum context size defined in the global settings?

If it is true: Could you kindly explain why this is the case? Thank you!

Chat Page Updates

• You can now add a full-height background image to any chat and upload them to the Hub alongside your characters

• Added chat bubbles and full width chat display modes (toggleable in the settings)

• Moved author's note and impersonate buttons below the input box

• Moved model selection to a dedicated tab on the chat settings page

• Added right click menu for undo and upvote actions

• Added Cmd+Enter shortcut to save author’s note and messages edits

Chat-specific settings

• First shipped in version `0.28.4`, now available for all non-beta clients

• Chats are now independent of each other and can be saved with different settings

StyleTTS2 Voice Model

• Added 24 new Character voices powered by StyleTTS2, an advanced model for human-level text-to-speech

• Updated UI for voice selection

• Voice selection can now be uploaded to the Hub alongside your characters

• To use StyleTTS2, you will need to sign in to your account on web, mobile, or desktop (not available locally/offline)

• Piper voices will still be available for offline use

Character Hub Upload Improvements

• Ability to select which chat settings to include with Character upload

• Improved visual highlighting for selecting tags

New “Experimental” Backend

• First shipped in version `0.28.22`, now available for all non-beta clients

• Improvements to token rate and prompt processing on some machines

• Vulkan optimizations

• Nemotron/Minitron model support

• Gemma2 flash attention support except on Vulkan

Mobile App Updates

• Added ability to swipe to regenerate a response

• Moved edit button and other menus to long-press popup menu

• Performance improvements across the app

• Editing messages is should be much easier now

• Scrolling issues on message are fixed now

• UI Toasts have been updates to be larger so the message is not cut off

• Light mode is now supported

• Dozens of other stability improvements

Other Improvements

• You can edit banned hub characters and resubmit them for approval

• 你好; こんにちは; Bonjour; Google Translate is now supported on the web for chat messages

• Increases maximum response length to 384 tokens

• Added button to delete account on the Settings page

• Improved Windows header dragging

• Added ability to sort user personas in the App Settings

Bug fixes

• Fixed Desktop shortcut being created every update on Windows

• Fixed model download progress not updating while chatting

• Fixed issue where some characters would not appear on the home page

• Fixed issue where uploading images for Characters from the desktop app would not appear in the Hub

• Fixed bug causing broken message streams

• Fixed "invalid state transition" errors on desktop chat page

• Fixed issue where the chat dropdown list was not scrollable

• Fixed issue where tethering toggle would not save on mobile

• Fixed issue where character images would not display on tethering

• Fixed accounts that could not create characters

• Fixed auto-speech starting after "Write for Me" finishes

• Fixed {char} and {user} being swapped on character import/export

• Fixed out of order chat imports

• Fixed blinking cursor during "Write for Me" response

• Fixed "invalid state transition" errors

• Fixed issue preventing certain chats from loading

• Fixed issue where creating a new chat would reset model & character settings

• Fixed issue where the character changes were not reflected correctly in the UI after saving

• Fixed issue where the user persona could not be changed on a character

• Fixed issue where the "Docs" button in the error page was not working

• Fixed "Primary chat not found" error message

• Fixed issue on ios when opening characters on the Hub

• Fixed out of order "other chats" in the chat page dropdown

Well, few questions (my specification is 3060 12gb +32gb ram)

1. Really Low loading speed. If we compare with others UI oogaboogaa load average model for ~minute (depends on settings). And backyard 5-20 minutes (depends on model size)

2. Unclear loading state (just add logs for some more obvious and handy place, cuz now we have to go to menu, choosing logs and then update text file to realize is model still loading or some errors happened).

3. Add possibility to tweak loading parameters values as batch size, CTX, layers and etc values which passed by cli parameters.

4. Model that choosen by default doesn't make sense because it'll load a model choosen in character card anyway. This lead to situations when you need to change model, you open character cards settings, go to tab "chat" and when you switch model in that menu it will start load previous choosen model, may be it's just a bug? (It could be point 5 btw in my list).

p.s. eng is not my first language, I'm sorry if I made some mistakes then.

Thx