Autogenerating a Book Series from Three Years of iMessages

[throwuwu]

I like this a lot. We need more hard records of personal correspondence. It would be cool to do this as a service.

Honestly when I read the title I thought it was going to be about using message history as a basis for generating a narrative account of the events using an LLM.

[darkwater]

Me too. But the real story is way better! Now I want to do the same with my Telegram chat history.

[demondemidi]

One of the great disadvantages of private emails (& texts) is the massive amount of correspondence that is lost to future historians. I have books of letters published by Feynmann, Feyeraband, Einstein, etc. Everything is now email that is behind a password, which means we'll likely never have troves of personal letters from which to contextualize modern people who become historical figures in the future.

[thefourthchime]

I love it as art, but it's usefulness is questionable. If you want a hard copy, just copy it to a microsd. Or three if you are worried about losing it.

[shawnc]

Ditto. Exactly what I pictured from the title and I was already thinking how interesting that would be. I’m curious to try something like it now.

[trizoza]

The same, I expected a whole criminal AI generated novel based on a history of a chat.

[Cthulhu_]

With the EU's DMA law and the preceding GDPR, some services have to offer an API so that your hypothetical service can pull this data. However, iMessage was notably excluded from this law, and then there's the encryption thing where you can't just pull data from e.g. whatsapp.

[css]

Awesome to see someone using my library [0] in the wild! Very cool use case.

[0]: https://github.com/ReagentX/imessage-exporter

[bkettle]

Author of the post here, thanks so much for making it available! It’s an excellent library and I was thrilled to find it.

[alchemist1e9]

Thank you for this! I recently was digging into the sqlite files with an idea to monitor them for changes indicating new messages and then extract them. My initial prototype seemed to mostly work, with a few hacks. Next time I look at that idea I’ll switch to your library. Any suggestions or tips around near-time accessing?

[jborichevskiy]

Big fan of this library. Thanks for making it!

[frankfrank13]

My Aunt has done a wonderful job at preserving the letters and diary entries between my grandfather + grandmother during WWII. My immediate thought is how our children and grandchildren will not have the same joy!

[Here is the blog for those interested](http://www.honeylightsletters.com/)

[CSSer]

Ha, I’m not sure it’s quite the same. If my understanding of most couples is correct, this would be more akin to preserving all of their sticky notes e.g. “Pick up milk on the way home”, “You’re getting the kids, right?”, “see you in 20”, etc.

Yet I suppose there’s a certain charm to that, so I hope I don’t sound like too much of a wet blanket.

[helboi4]

Now to make this work for Whatsapp for the brits... Got excited at the idea of a project and then realised I will have to learn Rust if I was to fork this haha.

Anyway, this is definitely a cool idea. Reading my chat history with friends is actually very nostalgic.

[kirmerzlikin]

Am I the only one who finds the idea of sending a full history of your private messages to some publisher for printing a little bit unsettling?

[cooper_ganglia]

I think if I sent my full history of private messages to a publisher, the most unsettled one would be the publisher!

[red-iron-pine]

the publisher is the business of spitting ink on paper. you should be more unsettled by being MITM'd by data mining companies whose job it is to change behavior via ads or other consensus-building tools.

[yaky]

Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but this is slightly creepy.

I never understood why people care to keep their private conversation history in the first place. IMO private messages (as opposed to public posts, blogs, etc) are supposed to be temporary ("ephemeral") - one does not record every face-to-face conversation or phone call after all.

[jakespencer]

I think this is interesting, and not necessarily unpopular. It seems different people just think about this issue differently. I do everything I can to preserve every single chat history that I can. And I would like to have every face-to-face conversation and phone call recorded and easily accessible for that matter. I have a sense that I am the sum of my experiences and I don't want to forget those experiences - it feels like I am somehow less than myself if I don't remember them.

But I've seen that episode of Black Mirror, too. So I wrestle with the desire to perfectly remember everything that I've ever experienced vs the mental and emotional health benefits that clearly come from being able to forget things.

[famahar]

I agree. But it's more to do with the part of me that cringes at messages I sent and exist forever. The person I was 10 years ago is so different. It feels so jarring reading old messages.

[nonameiguess]

I can see both sides. I did actually correspond with people using written letters up until maybe 2004 or so, and in many of those cases, especially old girlfriends and letters from my little sisters when I first went to college, reading them years later was intensely nostalgic.

On the other hand, when I left the Army I moved into a much smaller place, put most of my stuff in storage, then three years later figured anything I hadn't touched or used for three years was something I didn't actually need, and let the facility have all of it. That seems to have included both all those old letters and all of my old photographs. I can't say I actually miss those things. People in here are saying they don't want to forget the past but the reality of forgetting is you don't know you forgot it so it has no perceivable effect once it happens.

To be honest, I'm nostalgic enough as is and don't think I need even more things to hold onto. I already don't watch new television or listen to new music. I'm mentally stuck in 1999 and not sure that's healthy.

[vanjajaja1]

private messages are not face to face conversations nor phone calls. letters last a long time and would be a more accurate comparison

[Sigliotio]

I don't assume those are private or ephemeral.

It tells a story and its the zeitgeist of our generation.

People haven't thought about too much how to preserve something like this.

I personally like the idea and i can imagine exporting this with all / few messages of my mother and having a memory of that time.

[the-grump]

Because they're cherished memories for one.

[fennecfoxy]

People used to write letters to each other and older folks usually have a drawer full of all of their old letters.

We have learned a lot of history by reading famous peoples' letters long after their deaths.

[tivert]

> I never understood why people care to keep their private conversation history in the first place.

One reason that's understandable without relying sentimentality, is they're a record of what you were doing or thinking at a particular time, much like a private diary.

There's been a few times where I've gone back though stuff like chat history to better understand something that I didn't realize the significance of at the time.

[npteljes]

Really depends on the mindset when creating the message. If I message on a platform that keeps history, then I write with that expectation, or at least possibility, in mind. Now, this begs the question - is this modification of behavior problematic, does it detract perhaps from the meaning of the communication itself? Maybe.

The barrier, to me, is broken the moment we use technology. I work with this shit, I know how the sausage is made. I know that the phone calls are as encrypted as HTTP, that everyone can always keep record without you knowing, that even if they promise that something will go away, it may be won't, especially because it's a juicier target now just that promise alone. As soon as something is electronic, then it's a record.

[digging]

> IMO private messages (as opposed to public posts, blogs, etc) are supposed to be temporary

Why? Privacy and permanency are orthogonal axes. You've never kept a cherished letter or re-read a thoughtful text message?

[m463]

> are supposed to be temporary

However, this is just an opinion.

Thinking more carefully, I think my opinion goes more like this:

my data collected by others should be temporary, but I should be able to maintain my own data forever if I want.

[achristmascarl]

This is really cool, and also seems like it could be a great gift to a loved one.

I was playing around with Nomic Atlas (https://docs.nomic.ai/) recently and dumped a bunch of my chat history in there, and it was pretty interesting to visualize and browse my messages as clusters around topics.

Which leads me to think that you could bring the searchability of digital to the physical format by generating embeddings for the messages and running topic modeling on them; then, you could create an index of topics at the end of the physical book with page number references to messages about that topic.

[marban]

Python Script to export them on a Mac https://pypi.org/project/imessage-reader/

[jll29]

In 2000 years, your books may be the only thing left to study how we lived in the 21st century, because all ephemeral information (tweets, chat, SMS, emails, digital photos on people's devices) may have vanished.

[jjice]

I wasn't familiar with BN Press for personal use. I've done some research into KDP and Lulu, but I've decided that ebooks would be my main focus after getting a Kindle and loving it. For a limited/test run, BN Press seems fantastic. $30 for 1300 pages is fantastic.

[j1elo]

I love the idea!

The thing I like the least though is the table of contents, it's so dry with just the months and years. Despite the skepticism I have about latest AI use and abuse, generating a one-liner from the contents of each month seems like it would be a fitting usage for it.

[roland35]

I love this idea! I think this would be a fun idea, except 1) not sure how it would handle pictures, and 2) there are probably some texts which should not be published!

Also - noto emoji is great. It is also nice to use for 3d printing/laser cutting

[gavmor]

I like to listen to blogs through Pocket's TTS mode, but this one made me laugh because I couldn't easily skip these sections:

> /.../00008120-001854410CEB401E >>> cd 3d /.../00008120-001854410CEB401E/3d >>> ls 3d0292d3fe90e1e22c247403c0e9105ea0f9ff44 3d8830b71e98aae80b6eaf8bdd5500d79ce74946 3d02fe309afa7de839822d6f1b8433aa90090d17 3d88cdc16ff2b5231e5ea4b52271ee195a6f4b96 3d072c4fca5db4a5678fa10b137435f757e98492 3d8a425d70f4049417e855d273c44d8199de30c9 3d0739c90579fa907246d5c21bd8d8ebaa2d9d6b 3d8a43a1921f504bb4393250f75b24bfc2c5cedb 3d0798b3cc4d2f5ad347ffb8bc5a0f9d8c82cfb9 3d8a7c0460aadabf1b7fc9adea9e6a2a6e7bc73b 3d07a0adc5c5c22dc525ccd3a93fb05a50ef1ac5 3d8b6ad12c7617b3d783790a457b0aa19b193b68 3d0880f091c51ddc145e17c78d8e6f9a3e7e20c8 3d8b82abe05a9d697102d8b665c9d499e07492ea 3d093e92cf03abf3650411e09a647630a1e0c478 3d8ba897240ad32580bf8dfd00db8f181658cdfd 3d095e908ff898be3b3ffd64a75db959a58ac70a 3d8bc227d67ec4944df8e75291102367034d7214 3d09d5dcd5a9bdad67a80cd83201a9e1fb75aada 3d8c722f1d92f7cd6f90c936c14f60f51aad128b 3d0abb83123be82abf43ce20118e72fea06023c5 3d8ca6eeabeb1c01fae05bb20f08dedf734cfd04 3d0b246304c42d2ab1eb1892d629fcdfde689cb7 3d8d0c6b1bf7946c6bef91d60cccb32207b7bc01 3d0bb5f49e6f0e31348ef8feb9a38d4ce71f5ec7 3d8fd2fbcaf3079a683a8e486ecde8875f0a591d 3d0c1283936c45fec533a507b78558b5aa3159fa 3d8ff93bd94b3ea14edc77d1e677cf4ee4306e4e 3d0cb8e28462780bb9af1440e297ecd8224c70ff 3d90ea8bfbf62feda080cd0ccbd12fa5c8673993 3d0ce10de5f69606c52882215b99ebab259dc194 3d932638fe8ed669725b7a143c6a8b02b8959923 3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28 3d93c92679aa9d398331e27fdeed64b5094e68d1 ...

All I could think was, "Oh no, the nam-shub of Enki!"

[firewolf34]

I often listen to Pocket TTS on the train or when I can't access my device to skip or do much other than play/pause, and oh my god this gets me everytime haha. I am actually thinking of DIY'ing my own web-scraper thing to do a better job at it because especially for scientific articles, it's really rough when it gets to any LaTeX. And then I'm sitting there listening to some very automated sounding voice read off cryptic numbers and greek letters and code and math notation like some kind of Soviet number station (which is kinda cool at first, but gets annoying haha).

I want some kind of local document host that I can run a summarization or filtering script over to extract the portions that are legible to TTS, pipe it into something nice like ElevenLabs (if I was rich) or whatever, and then host a OGG for me to listen to on the go...

[egypturnash]

are you posting this while having a drink at the Black Sun

[federalbob]

A French company does this: https://www.monlivresms.com/ (warning: the website is annoying)

[pimlottc]

Doesn’t seem liken this includes images, which for some people could be a significant part of their conversations: photos, memes, reaction gifs, etc

[janfoeh]

If been thinking about doing just this for a bit now. I plan on showing thumbnails plus a QR code for animations and videos; I have yet to figure out how to make the files accessible in a private and durable manner though.

[bm-rf]

Maybe you could use something like GPT 4 vision To include a text description of the image in the transcript

[balu_]

Nice Idea, tryed to use the source and build a quick example myself... Now i'm reminded of me disliking latex (it just doesn't work)

[ThePowerOfFuet]

>My first approach at this LaTeX generation is quite simple: align left if the message is from me and right otherwise

Isn't that backwards?

[mym1990]

Very cool. A while ago I took a trip down memory lane with my partner to take a look at the first messages we sent each other, it was very neat and the memories definitely came back, even though it has been years since we met! A little bit like looking at a photograph and remembering the location and feeling in that moment.

[quyleanh]

I'm not sure if anyone know but I would like to ask about Signal.

I have an Android backup version of Signal message around 2020. Of course I have decrypt key. Since I can't restore it with current version, or the 2020 version of Signal (on Github release), how can I decrypt and extract all the message? Thank you.

[DesertVarnish]

I remember looking into a similar problem and learned that on desktop it was just an encrypted SQLite DB. It was readable with the standard SQLite library.

Not sure of the situation for the mobile backups though!

[stavros]

Hm, why can't you restore it? AFAIK you should be able to.

[larodi]

I somehow initially thought that the iMessages went through some LLM which retold them in nice Brothers Grim style. But from another perspective it also makes sense to have the originals, although the author is perhaps much better than me in writing messages which may one day be worth reading…