AI Tech Salon: Protect Your AI Keys - Lou Zell's Solution for Swift Developers

all right ladies and gentlemen we are live welcome to the AI Tech Salon we are here with a very special guest named lelle and he is the founder of air proxy Pro welcome Lou and we also have Ronald manak who is an experienced a AI engineer uh iOS Developer for many decades and years uh I I myself used to work at Apple for about 12 years and so in this room right now we have so much experience and we're going to talk to you today about how do you make your AI apps secure uh it's a little bit different when you're trying to put stuff onto a phone because there is a possibility that your actual uh open AI key can get compromized and we have many stories to share with you uh as well as um you know with Ronald's experience and and his Endeavors and so there's uh an interesting solution that actually Ronald if you want to kind of tee up a little bit and tell us how you found Lou uh and and and kind of how we can get into um some of the techniques that uh Lou that you're doing to kind of build some of these AI apps yeah so I I um I think um we started following each other like like after you um launched AI proxy uh because it seems like like we were running into the same problems and came up with the same solution um so for people listening um there are two currently two like like like reverse proxies um and we'll get to into a bit what what that does um for iOS developers um I maintain one um and the second one is is lose AI uh proxy uh which is really neat product um super like like like like well um it's it's super easy to use super easy to set up um and um you have a lot of users um that's correct right yeah yeah we have a good number of Indies using the project we have a a generous free plan so it's easy to get started and kind of test the market with an AI app that you want to build quickly and the whole purpose of AI proxy is once you have a prototype that you want to launch to production you can actually ship it to the App Store and your key remains secured you don't run the risk of having this AI Bill explode on you because someone has stolen your key and then abused it yeah so tell us a little bit about um when I started into this endeavor of making AI apps you know um when I could either make the stuff on device or make my little app on the server that runs and so one of the popular Frameworks I started using was the versel AIS SDK uh so it's everything stored in the server it's secure and I just pop my key in there and I don't have to worry about really too much someone taking the key it's a little bit different Paradigm today when you're building stuff on the phone because then um you have another extra variable involved uh in in for is like your phone can actually now make these requests to the server themselves and so uh one common mistake that I I learned when uh meeting Ronald and uh real time in person uh was that um if you store the actual open AI key in iCloud uh and then have it go onto the phone and then the phone makes the requests there is a possibility for someone to stand right between that little Gateway there and then take everything and so I want to learn a little bit from you Lou uh about your product air proxy Pro and kind of you know what you've developed and kind of uh streamlined because setting up this infrastructure can take a very long time to make and I like um would just love to hear you know how you came about this product and and how this solves this solution here to make things easier for people making apps yeah absolutely um the way you described it is absolutely perfect once you have a key that comes down to your mobile app it's not safe so there's a lot of misconception about this that you C you can use certain techniques to protect your key um while it's on the front end while it's on the mobile app and as you alluded to um like Ronald found as soon as you make a network request with that key that's living on your app it's susceptible to a man in the middle attack someone can sniff it it's very easy to set up you can use Charles proxy or proxy man put this proxy in the middle and watch the network traffic go by in plain text so if you're using techniques like you know loading the secret key from a pist this is something that we see people do or load this loading the secret key from cloud kit or a really popular one is Firebase remote config a lot of people use Firebase remote config get the secret key down they think they're safe because the key is living on Google servers and then at runtime it's it's loaded into memory but then what happens is you use that secret key to make a network request out to open Ai and now it's susceptible to a man in the middle attack so the the the short version of this is any secret key should not make it to the front end should not make it to a mobile app you can try opeation which helps prevent you know people from running strings on your binary and dumping it but there's all there's if the secret key is on the front end there's always a a way to grab it oh cool that's awesome yes I was just doing a a quick sound check making sure if if you guys are hearing this online just make sure you give like a thumbs up or or drop a comment uh what's nice is that we actually have a live stream this is actually a live stream interview uh and so that means you as the audience if you have any questions uh this is really for for you as well to learn together uh and this is kind of one of the joys of live stream uh media is that you know you can drop your comments and kind of participate with us and we definitely welcome that because we definitely will feature you know your comments and slide them right in because it'd be kind of fun to kind of do that uh so for those who aren't aware we have Lou on the show and he's a developer and he makes a product called the AI proxy and the AI proxy geared towards um helping you as a developer independent developer kind of get your app running and and get it going pretty fast on the App Store uh so how how long does it take for you to like get set up as a developer to get your kit installed and and and kind of start testing this whole thing yeah if you're a brand new developer you can use one of our bootstrap products so so AI proxy Pro is um it's a two-person company it's my co-founder Todd and myself and we've put together these bootstrap Swift apps that use various functionality like we have a a plant identifier we have like a trivia game um and they're driven from either anthropic or uh open Ai and so you could take these bootstrap products and go through our integration video and have go from nothing to a working app on your phone key protected ready to submit to the App Store in 10 minutes it's it's a very quick ramp up yeah um now naturally you would want to give it give the app your like Special Sauce you wouldn't just want to take our bootstrap app and ship it to the App Store well you could do that if you wanted to but it would be better to put some of your use it as a jumping off point um but yeah we we've we've put a lot of effort into making this very streamlined so that when you get started you know maybe you're not super familiar with how to make API requests and how to parse them and and deserialize them into into Swift structs um we've we've created these end to end products to make that really simple for you that's excellent that's excellent wow and you kind of you mentioned just now that that that it's not only open AI uh but you also support Claude and and other providers right that's right um we're adding more providers on like a a caseby case basis as customers ask for them um so the the most recent one we added was stability AI but this was a an initiative that has been going on for a while we we launched the first version of of AI proxy Pro as a way to like test whether this was had legs essentially and we and it was a very narrow implementation it only supported open Ai and once we got positive signal from that we we broadened it we went through this big effort of rebuilding a lot of the backend a lot of the components so that it could support any API now and we launched that last week we call that V2 you know AI proxy V2 um and yeah so we launched this last week and now it can the back end can support any provider but on the front end we still have to provide this like nice Swift package that gives you the end to-end solution right so you're not you're not trying to do the AI proxy integration um yourself on a network level um so we have end end support now for stability AI Claude anthropic and open Ai and uh for one of our great customers Jordy Bruin we're adding deep L um support right now oh cool and if you're if you if you need something else you know you're a listener you need something else name dropping but you name drop Jord Jordi Brown uh like like one of the top Indie iOS developers um what did he make uh Helm uh the is that his app um Helm that's hdden hel hel is H he's okay oh my God so many so many Indie developers sorry about that so um that that that's pretty awesome because uh I mean what what what episode does does he have that that that us your proxy can you talk about that well sure well he so he's integrated with with Mac whisper but I believe just in a in a prototype capacity right now but he is a Jordan is just amazing you know he he's this awesome guy um he he loves to prototype things very quickly so he's like a demanding customer but but it also makes our product much better and he's so generous in you know sharing our product and talking about our product it's it's awesome he's been a great supporter he's our he was our first major Pro subscriber in a big way um I I hope he's okay with me me sharing this he he found our project was like I maybe I he he found a project and he was like I will pay I will pay you x amount of money x amount of money if you can have this solution uh very quickly for me and I and Todd and I were like yeah we can do that and we were like yeah we'll do it and so we did it and and and he it was just like no issue for him you know he was like yeah so we delivered it and and he delivered and um he's been a great supporter of us thank you Jordy um yeah he's been a great customer oh that's awesome so so I mean that that that's like the best thing that can happen for any startup basically like like like a supporter um who has I mean I don't even know how many followers he has but it's it's it's it it is a lot let let let's check this out um Jordy uh oh man you know Twitter search it it is it still sucks yes gotta go to Google so I think there was I was um looking for some various apps because there was something somewhere I think it was on your site on AI proxy that shows um like the resources maybe and in these resources these are the some of the sample apps that people can use right so these sample apps that you said people can use and it it already has your stuff baked in so they would just need to go through the exercise like tell walk me through um what does a user need to do like I download this sample app and I want to start like using this um what what do I like what are like the next steps that I need um in order to get this going sure yeah so you would clone the AI proxy bootstrap repo that's the starting point okay the so the repo is AI proxy bootstrap you clone that and then each of these sample apps is separated into a different xcode project so the first thing you would do is you would open that exco project and you can actually build and run just right away but it won't be able to communicate with AI proxy because none of your credentials are set um so you'd clone the repo and then you'd watch our integration guide video we have like a 10-minute video it's maybe it's not even it's like eight minute video um and this would explain to you a few things it would explain how to set up device check which is one of our like core thumbs up it'll give you yeah yeah so so you watch this integration video it teaches you how to set up device check through Apple's developer dashboard right that's something that you'll get a key from them and then you upload this key to our um to our backend um and so that takes a few minutes and then you'll you'll grab your open AI key or your anthropic key and you'll submit that key into our back end we don't actually store it we we encrypt your key and we split that encrypted result and give you back half of it and you need to take that half half and put it into the bootstrap project um and yeah so those are the two main pieces of setup that you need to do it's getting device check working and getting what we call a partial key that partial key is your it's derived from your full key an encrypted version of your full key and we take a partial result of that that can explain why you chose for for for that approach a partial key uh because I think it's something that that I haven't seen often in um this kind of it's um so we needed a solution where the your full key never went over the network in any capacity right we we never want your full key to live either on device or go over the the network because again someone could grab it from the binary they could grab it from the app bundle or they can grab it over the network if if you get man in the middle um and so this solution it's a pretty nice little Nifty solution where if someone man in the middle is your app and you have an AI proxy integration all they get is this like partial key they can't back out the full open AI key or the full anthropic key from that and so that's one nice property a second nice property is AI proxy in our database we also only have a partial key so Todd and I can't go looking at your your secret keys and like copy pasting them and and going and playing with them um so this this having these secrets and in a distributed fashion makes it harder to exploit your key essentially and so as these requests come from the front end you know from your mobile app it we marry it up with the piece of data that we have on our back end we decrypt that full piece of data and we stuff that in the authorization header that flies off to open AI that's excellent it's a pretty nice solution yeah yeah that's very CL oh wow you that's cool and then uh you said there if something happens you can then just regenerate another key um like if you forget to copy and put that other part that you're were saying that needs to go into the app um and so that you can have this running and so forth right yeah yeah you can if if your key gets compromised in another way um you know maybe you've like accidentally committed it to source code or something um you can you can generate a new key through the provider's backend so either open AI or or Claud whoever you know now whoever and submit that to our back end will generate a new partial key for you that you update in your in your front end fantastic because you you have like different like like providers like like like anthropic open AI um so how how do you know or how does the proxy know which request has to go to which provider yeah the as part of the initialization of those bootstrap apps there there's there's yeah thank you good question I I left this out there are two there are actually two pieces of data there's the the um the partial key and then there's also a service URL and that service URL if you look at it it'll be like api. AI proxy Pro some UI some guid and that guid is your service on AI proxy so you as a developer when you go through our integration we give you a service and that service URL um is the resource location of your service so when you make a request to that service we know on our backend that it's configured as a proxy to a specific provider and so we're able to look up the relevant context and complete the complete the request out to the right provider uh okay because you mean this is a hosted solution right so so all your um um customers are using like uh the same URL but then they have to have like a unique uh uu ID or something to distinguish uh Jordy from me and from from from anybody else in yeah what right so everyone actually gets a different URL they they all get a different each customer gets a different URL for and one customer may get many URLs if they're a customer that has several Services um to make that clear like you know one of our great customers he has he has seven apps he's got seven apps using aoxy so he has seven different URLs um one representing a service that route that so I don't know why I'm taking so long to describe this each service is a proxy so so this person that has seven different projects on a proxy he gets seven different services and when a request comes into that service it's connected out to the relevant um provider gotcha that makesense okay yeah and and in my experience there are some like like like like subtle differences in the apis from like like like anthropic uh versus open AI U for example um in enop anthropic really wants to have like like like the order of the messages is very particular about the order so it has to be like like user assistant user assistant user assistant if you for for by any like like mistake have two user messages after one another uh it will throw an uh so how do you handle these things uh is is it is it all handled on on on the proxy server so does it mean that that that that the the developer doesn't have to to worry about these things or is is is there how how does that work so yeah another good question the we we defer this problem down to the client package it's actually whatever the logic is in the client package meaning like Swift open AI is a great client package by uh James rockrun like it's very it's very complete he manages that and then he's got another one swift anthropic the logic for how the request is serialized all lives in that client Side Library the proxy server doesn't do much it does a little bit it has a little bit of special tweaking um specifically around how request headers are passed on because the different Services expect different formats for for authorization headers but the majority of the logic for how the request body is structured all comes from the client Library so that really so so the so the burden is really on the client Library author in this case James you know that has has written Swift open AI um to get that right if you're an end app developer and you just want to get up and running quickly um you you shouldn't try to juggle how like request structure should be you should just use James's lib or or we have one to AI proxy Swift you can use that too um and and it'll serialize the request in the appropriate fashion okay so so um there your uh library that you mentioned is like like a replacement for for open AI Swift open AI is that correct it's not really replacement it's more of a central location for the functionality that our customers request so so I'll describe it this way the trade-off between picking Swift open Ai and AI proxy Swift is Swift open AI is very complete it has the full scope of features that that open AI provides and James maintains this library in a great way uh it remains up to date so if you want to experiment if you're just prototyping hacking around and you want to experiment with all these different features Swift open AI is a great place to go to AI proxy Swift is more than just open AI it's it's our location of all the library all the various providers that we support um we'll live in Swift in AI proxy Swift excuse me we'll live in AI proxy Swift and it's more of a feature-based library in that like you'll see through the me it's it it'll be like how to do x with open AI how to do y with Claude um and so it's this like end to endend for a very narrow use case and that narrow use case is what our customers have requested right so if you're if you read through that read me you'll see that it's how to do X on Y how to do y on z um and that's because our customers said Hey how do I use the ultra endpoint on stability AI oh we can add that in AI proxy Swift so short version AI proxy Swift is a repository that holds endtoend use cases for various providers Swift open AI is narrow to just open AI but it has this breadth of all open AI functionality that's very cool so zooming out a little bit just for folks who are just kind of tuning in uh we have LEL here and uh is the founder of AI Pro a co-founder right yes of AI proy uh Pro and so this will allow you as a developer to um kind of like not worry too much uh about your keys from open AI getting stolen U if you're trying to do the implementation uh and to get started on the implementation you provide some templates for folks to get started uh does that and it includes some um like the package manager so basically an example here is like for example I wanted to make an app that does uh image generation using Dolly I can get your your your template and just right away go get a key from open Ai and then start hitting the endpoint um and within 10 minutes you'll have an app that basically you can technically ship to the App Store uh and and have like images that generate from Dolly using your own key uh which is pretty awesome wow so that's that's that's really cool like um it's a really hard problem and there's there's many many layers here um you know there like if we just kind of go a little bit deep here it's like you know whenever you're you're putting a request in onto the phone um you're you're going to have to go through all these different layers to talk through and kind of the first one they're going to hit is like your AI proxy Pro right to kind of figure out okay like or I guess you know when your device is doing something on the software like you're typing in a message to send into like a chat uh it's going to use some type of package manager to kind of make sure that it complies to a standard in this case like open AI standard spec or something if you're using that endpoint uh and then like you're you describe some of those package managers that kind of sit at the core there and then those hand that um request information off to um your service and then your service is kind of that thing that will act in between your phone uh and and and the other servers so that um like you as a developer are protected uh and and everything's kind of going to be honky door there and so what's nice about um it sounds like with AI proxy Pro you actually have a free tier to use so um you you just get a key from open Ai and you get about a thousand requests for free uh and that means that you as developer can go and experiment and and see if your app is even viable and if people are actually going to uh use the app you know you know because and because sometimes you just want to launch many ideas and you don't really know what sticks uh so this is just a good way to get from zero to MVP uh using your stuff without um really kind of worrying too much about um all the nitty-gritty details um and this seems to be like perfect for people who want to just be Builders uh who want to maybe take it from if you've been experimenting with uh using your stuff on on a web server or something and now you kind of want to take it down to the device this seems like a really cool solution thank you yeah I I think you know specifically around the free tier I think we want to encourage people to just prototype just you know scratch their itch that they they they want to scratch um and see if the market responds to what they're shipping um and so many of our customers you know they're they're well within the three tier their shipping apps trying to see what'll stick and we don't charge them anything for that because I mean really the usage is is low and it's a great way to um experiment and if they grow out if they graduate out of that tier it means they're doing pretty well so we have another you know Ray scrolling here another very affordable tier at at $8 a month um and and essentially you know it's it's I think the model is very fair if you are growing and doing well then you graduate out to these more pricey tiers and and really they're they're quite reasonable um you know 40 bucks a month gets you 100,000 request per month so um I think that the the pricing is it it's it's a great model because we do well when our customers do well I think that's a short way to put it that's excellent yeah so tell us a little bit about you and kind of how did you get this started and um like you know where are you based out of and so forth and kind of uh what's your background in development cuz this type of techniques that he's doing today kids look listen up kids uh you know it takes quite a number of experience to kind of figure out it's not like some hey I just figure this out at a hackathon and then like it's already live and I can get a million people to scale it's it's a very complicated problem with many many layers involved and and usually uh in my experience working with software developers um you know people who have had those Battle Scars now use those uh Battle Scars to their advantage actually and I I can kind of see that through just the work that you've been doing here and your offerings and so I'm just kind of curious like yeah where how did you start with your software development Journey kind of where where are you based out of and how you kind of got here uh just kind of love to hear yeah yeah yeah absolutely um so first easy question is we're San Francisco and Maine based my my co-founder Todd Hamilton is in Maine um and you know we work remotely well together we've worked together for years and years and when we need to really grind on something we visit each other and and go heads down and and and do it together on a trip um so the software Journey I've been writing software for quite a long time um I started as I was an electrical engineer and I started writing software as a parametric tester on Silicon Wafers so as devices come out of a silicon Fab you have these like big machines that put pins down on the various there are five spots on a silicon wafer where you can run tests and these pins come down and you write these these this basic right HP basic to um apply some voltages across them and and and run these parametric tests and so I did that as on as from ON Semiconductor that was my first real programming job and then I became a hardware engineer where I wrote C for quite a while um just low-level firmware and um then I made the the leap from HP basic and C to rails ruon rails I started writing rails back ends and that was huge that was like such a a wild jump to go from this low-level stuff to to being like insanely productive in rails and I still use rails today so rails this was 2008 I started using rails um after being a c programmer and I mean the level of productivity was just insane and so now still 17 years later or whatever um I still use rails uh and AI proxy Pro uses rails um if you are a customer and you use our developer dashboard that developer dashboard is rails the proxy itself is different um but all the configuration that we do um as you're setting up your rate limits and you're setting up device check and and everything that's all through rails dashboard so love rails um and yeah from from there I I I did more uh oh I jumped on the I iOS bandwagon and started doing Objective C uh so I have some scars there I think you know Ronald has been there too um pre Arch Objective C which I never mind it actually I honestly didn't I I I feel like Objective C was fine I I kind of like Objective C actually I I have a C background was fine too yeah yeah okay maybe for people with a C background we liked Objective C um and yeah I mean a fast forward a bit my my my last major job before aoxy was at Lyft and there I wrote a lot of python um and I managed the the I was a technical lead for the telematics team which was like bringing in huge amounts of of data and this this distributed way from all of our our fleets of cars and processing all this data to turn it into risky driving events so we would understand how people were driving on the road and that that parallel system that was processed ing all this data um was was designed by me and and that was a very rewarding experience um I love my time at lift so I'm not one of these like startups startups are all good big companies bad type people I think you can learn a lot at big companies and and I really liked my time there um and then yeah now ai proxy like Todd and I launched a bootstrap app with a friend John Bishop which was uh it was it was called make with AI it was supposed to be a bunch of of bootstrap products to get people building on iOS quickly um to build to to build um AI experiences on iOS and immediately after launching we hit this problem we're like okay how are our customers going to protect our key their keys like it's the most obvious question but uh it took us launching that product to be like wow this is actually a big problem and I started poking around and yeah and seeing what people were doing and and Ronald this was before you launched your proxy if you had launched your proxy probably would maybe wouldn't using that um and so yeah looking around we we didn't really see a great solution to it and Todd and I started brainstorming on what it would take to do like I said the the narrow solution that only supported open AI use split key encryption use device check um use certificate pinning kind of some of these practices that would head off any sort of abuse against your your both someone stealing your key and the Point that's a that's a piece that a lot of people Miss actually is like you can create a cloud function and you can put it up and have it be a proxy between your app and the service provider but if you don't put any protections against that endpoint that can be abused and then you're stuck with a huge bill from your cloud provider um and so we started thinking of ways that we could really just make this more simple where an end developer could take like one of our bootstrap products go through a 10-minute integration and ship the thing to produ uction and not worry about getting stuck with this like1 thousand bill one day because someone has has totally abused your endpoint no there nothing 1,000 that that's nothing I can tell you from experience oh no yeah that's right yeah story but yes yeah yeah so um you you said like like like that you had a project before this called make make with AI I think um so what's the status of that is is that still around no no that that one's that one's gone we we were trying a whole bunch of like quick quick hits you know we were trying to find we were trying to trying a bunch of various products to see what would stick I did a politics site too like it very different from from Tech um and and yeah and uh we were kind of in this mode T and I where we were experimenting with things and trying to figure out what what was compelling and would actually solve the problem and with this like this is by far the most useful thing that the two of us have ever built together so so we got out of our six week we were doing everything in six week Sprints like we had do a six week Sprint ship one thing six week Sprint sh ship another thing and then with this we we got enough positive signal and we went all in on it we don't work on anything else now it's just this yeah that makes a lot of sense I mean it like like like a lot of like startups that that we all know and love like like slack for example they started out with something completely different I think in the case of slack they they they tried to build a game uh because the founder before that um uh what did he do the photo site I forgot the name of photo flicker exactly which I think also what started out as a game so here's this this found always making games but always ends up making something different but very successful um so I mean like like lots of like startups they they they they try to build something run into to to to a problem and and and finding a solution for that problem they run into turns out to be like like like the the key to success uh and it seems like like like for you that that's that's the same thing um I want to go back to to to to one part we talked about and that that's like like the client libraries um so what if if if if I already have an app and I'm using for example mecp uh or maybe another like like like like Library uh can I still use proxy for that you can it's a little bit more involved and actually this is something that I'm working on now um um I want to be able to have SDK writers like Library authors add support for AI proxy very easily and I think that can be done with a with an SPM package where if you include this SPM package in your library um you can make a couple tweaks to URL session and URL request uh essentially writing the the the headers that we expect that a proxy XS um to make your lib AI proxy compatible that's a little bit out there right now so you know you can't use it today um so if you're using macpa right now you would have to switch to James's Swift open AI to use a proxy Pro I think that's the that's the short answer unfortunately fair enough fair enough yeah yeah I I we are Todd and I we've been brainstorming on that we we're trying to make that easier um we're trying to make it so that as a library author and and maintainer if your customers want AI proxy sport you can add it to your library easily that that's something that's on our road map yeah yeah Y and talk about James uh he also has like like this this this other project called poly Ai and we we talked about briefly about that uh before the show uh not your project but it's it's something that that that that you and I both liked um way for the show um but it seems to be like like a little bit like like a kind of a Hidden Gem uh it it it totally is what is it yeah so I I mean this has always been intriguing to me I James I don't know if you're watching this but you do great work he he comes up with these great libraries um this one in particular you can have as your provider you know you've got them there open AI gy mistal llama 3 3.1 um and you can as an app developer you can build against a single interface uh in this case it's the open AI request model and then as your backend fulfiller you can you can switch between these various providers and and actually James added AI proxy support to this for specifically for open AI it's not for the other providers yet it's something that I I'll contribute and I want to contribute soon um but even like aside from AI proxy like I think this is sweet and I when he launched it um I was quite surprised that it didn't get more attraction um because there are there are analoges to this in the web world that do seem to do very well where um you you have request come in to to some of these these like API unifiers and um it takes a a single contract um as input and then you can pick the provider on the back end and I thought the analog worked perfectly I I thought you know people can buy build Swift apps now using this same Paradigm and it hasn't taken off yet but I hope it does because uh yeah I I like to support James and I think he does good work and um I think for end users building on this if they want to experiment like the reason reason you would use this as an as an end developer is you want to experiment with the the various providers to see what works well for your use case and instead of implementing against a bunch of different contracts you implement against one contract and then fiddle you know flip some bits and um and and see how it works against the others other providers so I think it's a really neat solution yeah especially now since it's like like you have like like uh models that are competing with like like like open ey for the first time like we've got like like Claude uh 3.5 Sonet that

that that's um really good there that's like like the new llama uh whereever 3.1 uh the four 4 405 billion parameters um that that has that was launched two weeks ago I think so yeah so so for developers who would want to like like like experiment with that Swift developers in particular uh this is like like like like a great Library I I totally agree with that um and I think like like like he was inspired by llm which is like javascript's um I think it's also reverse proxy if I'm not mistaken um yeah basic like yeah translates like like open AI calls to the format that that that Claud wants to see and and and and others so yeah yeah yeah right when I sent that to you I sent I said llm report but you're right it's light llm that's what that's yeah yeah that's really cool so for those who are just tuning in um this is the the name of our show is called the AI Tech salon so we were kind of rebranded uh a couple weeks ago or a little bit a month ago and big shout out to our friend uh Billy vinus and he um is among many of the F folks who were guests of the show previously and the goal of AI Tech Salon is to find people uh out on the world who are into Ai and doing different types of things and kind of showcase them because there maybe some things that you're working on in development that you may not have heard of and so we're using this live stream as a as a as an Avenue and is a venue uh for you to join us and discover these really amazing talented people uh all over and these are Indie developers that maybe uh on X that you may not see or um if you're on YouTube you can see this as well if you're on Twitch there's also a live stream uh and so we're actually working to get this into a podcast format so this interview would be formatted down and available on Spotify and on Apple very soon uh but for now we're just getting a a raw stream live and uh this will be archived and available for you so um for those who are just joining in we have Lou who works on AI one of two people who are co-founded the AI proxy Pro and uh part of this Tech Salon today is mostly like getting configured as like how do I then do uh AI development on device on specifically Apple Hardware uh Swift using uh you know on the Mac and iOS because like those are kind of the biggest potential right now for disruption a lot of people right now are focusing on AI apps on the web because it's the easiest to do and a lot of the infrastructure is built out and obviously if you want to test the market that's probably the easiest way uh but what's happening now as Apple's going to be you know coming into the fall into the next release of of hardware and devices uh more and more things are going quote unquote AI aied on the hardware and that's going to unlock a lot of capabilities and there's a whole new market of people uh who already have phones who are going to be introduced to the concept of AI so the fact that if you're listening to this today um just getting to play with this type of soft software in Ed capacity even the demos uh can put you that much more ahead of someone who's just going to be picking it up and just hearing about in the news maybe a year from now um so one of the tools uh AI proxy Pro kind of came across the radar uh along with Ronald and his attempts when I was trying to learn Ai and trying to get started on device and like what do I do uh it's so confusing out here it's it's kind of crazy and and like I went for the easiest route it's like let me just play with backend and front-end web development and you know why not learn a new programming language right um but that now um to me it's becoming very obvious where the the real Gap is and that's in on device um part of the reason it's hard to do like you like Lou was explaining earlier in the show that it's really hard to do stuff and so they as trying to figure out their own solution kind of came up with this product uh to Showcase to the world and I I think this is a a really really cool way of um getting this out there to the world and I um like you know I'm just so delighted to just have you on the show it's so amazing yeah yeah nice right yeah yeah I appreciate that oh I think we're our goal is just to make it as easy as possible for someone with an idea uh you know they want to prototype something with with AI build an AI experience uh against any of these providers um make it easy for them to to realize that concept to get that on device and then shipped to the App Store in a safe manner where their bill is not going to explode from one of these AI providers being abused one of their end points being abused that's really cool so what um so right now as people will try it on um you since you guys are basically uh I'd say like bootstraps single person Founders uh getting in in contact with you seems to be pretty easy so as I start to adopt this and I have maybe needs that aren't in AI proxy Pro uh you your developers anyone can just reach out and say hey can you add this feature or uh I'm getting an influx of users like my AI girlfriend thing is taking off off and people are going crazy and I need to add video can you add some capability and you're like okay let me think about it see what I can do type of thing right just kind of this back and forth no that that's exactly right um yeah we I mean we prioritize the customers that we have on the the starter and the Pro Plan like when they need features we we get them very quickly but even if if you're in the free plan and you want to build something um we are very receptive yeah you can you can message just on Twitter uh it's Todd Ham on Twitter and and lore I'm trying to get rid of that underscore um on Twitter you gotta buy them out $1.8 million yeah right um yeah that was wild uh and then L Lou aoxy dopro for uh email or Tod at aproxy dopro for email but yeah headit us up we're we're we're very receptive um and we can we can also tell you if it's not a good fit too if it's something that's you know out of scope for for what we're we're building but um yeah we try to is is is there anything like like like like you can share like like which is like like out of scope uh or things that that that's maybe new users have asked that that that that's definitely like like like too much or uh not possible well you know uh I I would say this this first comment that came in here um is there any multiplayer functionality with the bootstrap um you know the multiplayer is more of a it's more of a networking challenge than uh like consuming an an API in a safe manner um so that would be something that well you know there are these providers actually that make the the name is escaping me right now but there is a provider out there that is supposed to make drop dropping in multiplayer extremely easy to web app I'm not sure if they have something for for Swift wow um so I I was about to say that that would be out of scope but now I'm questioning whether it really would be um yeah the name is escaping me but there's a startup that's like you know you drop in this package and you get real-time multiplayer with like the cursors you know on on a web page and I'm not sure if they have an analogous solution for Swift but if they did then it would be within scope but if they didn't then um yes us writing a bunch of custom networking code would be would be out of would be out of scope that makes sense I think my app idea is a little bit simpler it's basically um kind of like what you have here uh like with these really cool looking uis uh but has basically GNA make a Tinder for AI girlfriends okay I bet you I could hack away I could hack away this on the weekend cuz it just seems like one of the templates here may even have that already for me and I just have to use some of the swipe gestures and I mean it's so fast I mean it just seems very easy to do I mean I I would think yeah drop drop a gesture recognizer on um on a one of the image gen one of the image gen samples and yeah you you should be good to go and instead of having the user enter the prompt like you you code code in the prompt yeah I could probably even generate them on the Fly cuz like um you know the the personalities depending on how they're interacting and and and their their stuff which would be kind of fun so uh you heard it here folks we're prototyping yeah next major to launch that's right yeah so if you're interested uh drop a thumbs up or retweet drop a comment I got you you know I I get a thousand requests for free and we'll see if the app is even viable I mean why not right so hey that's the beauty trying out for that he there you go yeah oh you got that the yes this is so funny oh I think this is from medieval yellow first aid oh metal yellow first a yeah cool I think this from uh from YouTube the YouTube comments and stuff that's awesome and um yeah and so um people can find this uh at air proxy dopro correct y ay. proo yeah oh yeah AI proxy sorry

AI proxy proo and then that's kind of where they can find out a little bit more uh and basically just get started with the free plan no credit card required that's pretty awesome and so you just put your email and sign up and pretty much uh get configured right and looks like all these people have been uh trusted developers here who've who've used your your product to get started um so that that's that's really really cool amazing yeah we have some of the the app Studios using us which is really nice that quote from Mark you know he runs an app studio and it's really helpful for them you know they're trying to trying to spin up apps and not maintain their own own back end you know they don't want that Hassle and so this is a a perfect solution for them nice that's awesome um do you have any more questions or insights Ronald you want to share or any interesting stories I I I don't uh I mean like like like for for Swift in in general oh one one thing actually uh yeah no we we um uh we is is is Rey me vatal Prince and and Billy so so basically like like our old um um uh previous like like guests on the show uh we applied for Modzilla grants to to to build like open- Source Swift tools uh for AI projects uh unfortunately we didn't get the grants um so uh I was really excited about that because like like we were planning all kind of kind of Cool mlx Tools uh maybe it will happen uh but it will happen like like probably a lot slower um that is like like like like like like a separate thing um yeah we'll hope hope hope to have an upbit on that uh uh soon as as as as as well but it will take take take at least like like like a lot slower longer than than than planned uh but yeah no I'm I'm I'm super excited about like like AI proxy I think it's it's it's an incredible product um and the way that that's like like like like the uh James's Library uh Swift Library it makes a lot of sense for for new developers to to to use it it's it's it sounds like like like like the ultimate solution that that should have been there like like like a long time ago we all start working on on all all our apps uh so yeah uh thank you so much for this and for any of those who are on X definitely feel free to follow you uh L _ uh you know hit that follow and uh kind of follow along and the journey here because you'll be posting various updates and stuff uh on there as well and um any other places in Social things that people can hit you up is like aoxy Pro yes um oh actually yeah we do have an air proxy Pro Twitter account but Todd and I mostly just use our personal accounts so yes maybe yeah that's probably best for staying in the loop we maybe need a more consistent uh social media strategy uh but yeah I would say for for getting updates about the product Todd's Todd is more infrequent of a poster but when he posts something it's it's a bigger announcement um I post more very more smaller incremental progress so um if you're interested in in that granularity then then I would be a good follow but for for the main like big big updates uh I would follow Todd Todd ham at at Twitter he'll have a that's amazing I mean we also can't get more America as far as like the spread from all Maine all the way to to San Francisco as far as like remote work and the future uh of what you guys are doing I think this is really really incredible I'm excited to get my hands uh on it you know I'm becoming more aware of this stuff either through Ronald and through my friends uh and that's why kind of we have the show that you know AI Tech Salon with Ronald and Ray so um you know to kind of bring awareness uh as people who are building even if you know like I I think what's really insane today is how good these AI systems like Claud sadar to take existing code like give it feed it some really good code examples like what you guys have on the repo and say hey I want to add this functionality how do I do that and then they can start kind of building on top of that and so um like stuff like this is super helpful in that that stack because uh more and more kids are just going to be you know doing prompting uh to get the outcomes that they want and and then like this kind of just red reduces a lot of that mess and infrastructure and um we get to kind of stand on the shoulder of giants as kind of what many people say uh and and this code is very well um you know like through a lot of different implications for security and and and all that stuff so that you know you as a user don't have to worry about it so I'm excited to go play around with it and make my little AI girlfriend Tinder thing yeah please do and please hit me up if you have questions with the integration I'm happy to help that goes for the listeners too yeah we're we're a very receptive company that sounds pretty good uh any any other thoughts to share on your your end there L uh no just thank you right and Ronald for having me on the show this has been a lot of fun I really appreciate the opportunity cool excellent so thank you for joining us today uh on our AI Tech Salon show um we have the show every Friday uh right around noon Pacific Standard Time and so you can find us here and uh L now a friend of the show and you know welcome to join anytime and um we have Lively discussions and focusing uh anywhere from like on device Swift uh you know iOS Hardware uh software AI Tech tools um a lot of also things on the back end and front end as I'm kind of discovering it and really this is just kind of an outlet for us to find really great people who are building really cool stuff anywhere around the world uh and bring them to your attention and so uh with that uh thank you for joining uh the AI Tech salon and I'll see everyone uh tomorrow or next week and whatever cool take it easy cool thank you right

2024-08-10 09:22

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