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Turning Texts, Images & Videos into Conversations

NowComment has the most sophisticated collaboration tools available for group discussion, annotation, and curation of texts, images, and videos.

It displays threaded commenting alongside the sentences and paragraphs of texts, the areas of images, and timestamps of videos to create engaging online conversations literally in context. Brainstorm, debate, and collaborate as never before!

Thinking Partners can bring the power of the latest OpenAI Large Language Models to your NowComment conversations!

Key Features

Free Accounts

Upload and discuss documents with people you invite or with the whole Internet ("Public Documents") at no cost!

Time Efficient

Interesting comments can be found quickly (they're tied to relevant document passages), and summary lines make skimming fast and easy.

Powerful

Any sentence, paragraph, image, or video can have multiple conversations, keeping discussions focused and on-topic.

Simple to Use

Our interface is intuitive, your documents are accessible wherever you are, and we do the hosting and maintenance.

Feature-Rich and Scalable

NowComment has the features to handle very large groups: notifications, assignments, subgroups, moderation, and more.

Read It Your Way

By default comments are off to the side (with multiple sort options!), but you can also display comments in-line.


Collaborate with AI in Comments & Replies

Introducing Thinking Partners

AI as Your Reading Buddy or Writing Coach

  • Write your own text of any genre or upload one from a Web Site, PDF or Word Doc.
  • Choose a sentence, paragraph, or the whole document. Click the button to Ask AI then select a Thinking Partner. Pose a question and add a description of yourself if you would like, then wait for the results.
  • Critically read the output from OpenAI that comes to you in an edit box. You can also Resubmit and Resubmit to choose from alternative results. Edit the output of the results you choose so that it is helpful (for other users), honest (about the facts), and harmless (free of bias).
  • Hit Start conversation and see how an AI comment is posted in context showing that this was written by a Thinking Partner and edited by you. You and others can reply to any AI collaborated comments with human-only replies or with another Thinking Partner.
  • Your work with OpenAI is free and anonymous on NowComment. No separate login is required and no identifying data is transmitted to OpenAI.


LLMs at your service

With the click of a button, you can deploy OpenAI's Large Language Models (LLMs) next to any document on NowComment. You can select from a bevy of brilliant bots.

We have designed these bots to be Thinking Partners who are always available to be your personal mentor, tutor, coach, teammate, student, simulator, or tool. Thinking Partners don't just correct your writing or summarize a text; they help you to become a stronger writer and a more thoughtful reader.

NowComment's Thinking Partners shape and transform the output you receive from an LLM. This is a different experience than you get with the popular, off-the-shelf, product-oriented tools. You will be inspired by the control our Thinking Partners give you over how to integrate AI into your own creative and thinking processes.

There are over 30 Thinking Partners to choose from already (with more coming all the time)! And since there are so many, to guide your choice, we have organized them into the seven approaches for students that Dr. Ethan Mollick and Dr. Lilach Mollick describe in a recent paper, "Assigning AI," as briefly described in the next section, below.

We also invite you to make your own Thinking Partners. NowComment is a platform where we learn with and about Artificial Intelligence.


Remix & Create
Thinking Partners

Detail the persona of the best Thinking Partner you can imagine having. Itemize for that character the reading strategies you want them to employ. Specify the output that you want to receive. Test and test until you have taught your Thinking Partner how you want it to respond to the texts of any genre that you are reading or writing and uploading to NowComment. Become a prompt engineer.

Productivity Meter
AI as Tool: Extending Performance

We are learning together how to use AI as a tool to extend our thinking. These Thinking Partners can translate, adapt, and transform text. They can give you a prompt for creating an image and more. See Mollick & Mollick (2023) for more.

Keep your own
AI Dialogue Notebook

Use NowComment to add daily logs on one document each week. Also add images and videos. Invite others to comment. Use Thinking Partners beside your freewriting, jottings, exploratory logs. Upload a new document each week for you logs, then collect these weekly log documents and things you are reading into a Personal Collection. This collection becomes your AI Dialogue Notebook.

feedback icon
AI as Mentor: Providing Feedback

Ask a Thinking Partner to give you feedback on your work. Some examples of available Thinking Partners. See Mollick & Mollick (2023) for more.

direct instruction icon
AI as Tutor: Providing Direct Instruction

Select a Thinking Partner that pushes you to think through problems and connect ideas. Some examples of available Thinking Partners. See Mollick & Mollick (2023) for more.

thinking thinking icon
AI as Coach: Increasing Metacognition

Some Thinking Partners will help you to think about your thinking. Examples of this kind of Thinking Partner. See Mollick & Mollick (2023) for more.

Teammate AI
AI as Teammate: Increasing Collaborative Intelligence

Invite a Thinking Partner into your study group to provide inspiration, find consensus, or play “devil’s advocate.” Consider these Thinking Partners. See Mollick & Mollick (2023) for more.

Learning Robot
AI as Student: The power of teaching others

Treat a Thinking Partner like your student who has given you their thinking on a text. Respond by teaching more about the topic. Try this with these Thinking Partners. See Mollick & Mollick (2023) for more.

Simulator Icon
AI as Simulator: Creating Opportunities for Practice

Some Thinking Partners are characters we have created to have specific, ideological ways of responding. Choose a Thinking Partners like this to engage with different perspectives. See Mollick & Mollick (2023) for more.

Featured Public Documents


Recent Comments on Public Documents

Click on a comment's summary to see it in context

See more comments

Create or Join a Group

Click here to create a group, make it public and invite anybody to join you!
OR join one of the public groups listed below

Study Groups: United Nations Sustainable Development Goals


Literature and the Arts


Science, Technology,
Engineering & Mathematics

© Copyright 2021, Paul Allison.
"NowComment" is a registered trademark of Paul Allison. All rights reserved.

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Quickstart: Commenting and Sharing

How to Comment
  • Click icons on the left to see existing comments.
  • Desktop/Laptop: double-click any text, highlight a section of an image, or add a comment while a video is playing to start a new conversation.
    Tablet/Phone: single click then click on the "Start One" link (look right or below).
  • Click "Reply" on a comment to join the conversation.
How to Share Documents
  1. "Upload" a new document.
  2. "Invite" others to it.

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