If you’ve been using the internet for any length of time, you’ve probably used a tool like Google Translate to translate web pages or pieces of text into languages ranging from Uzbek to Esperanto. But what if you want to translate into more esoteric “languages”. “LinkedIn Speak”, “Gen Z Slang” or “The Perverted Margaret Thatcher”?
This week, many people on the Internet were disappointed to find that they were working with artificial intelligence Kagi Translation can perform this and countless other impossible “translation” tasks. While collective discovery highlights the playful, creative side of large language models, it also reveals the risks of allowing users to play with generalized LLM tools.
What exactly is “language”?
You know best as Kagi A paid competitor to Google’s deteriorating search productthe company launched the Kagi Translate tool back in 2024he said at the time that it was “simply a better” competitor to tools like Google Translate DeepL. At launch, the company said, Kagi Translate “uses a combination of LLMs to select and optimize the best result for each task,” which “can sometimes cause quirks that we’re actively working to resolve.”
The early versions of the tool provides simple drop-down menus to choose from 244 different languages for the source and target of the translation. At least in February 2025 one clueless Hacker News poster noticed that you can play with the URL parameters to set the target language to “rude guy with Boston accent” without breaking anything.
An HN user saw more fun uses for Kagi Translate over a year ago.
In recent weeks, Kagi’s own social media account has highlighted the service’s capabilities Emulate Reddit Speak or Talk to a McKinsey consultant Kagi Translate in a few clicks. Early Tuesday morning, these unusual use cases breached security after a Hacker News user is pleased to report “Kagi Translate now supports LinkedIn Speak as an output language.” Below that popular HN topic, other users drew attention you can change the output language just by typing in the search bar of Kagi Translate’s web interface, and the tool’s core AI will do its best to accommodate you.
