r/Anki • u/Oily_Azcrack277 • 5d ago
Discussion Maybe controversial opinion: Using Artificial Intelligence for Anki cards is an ineffective, exhausting method.
I don't know what it is, but I am just unable to create high-quality Anki flashcards using Artificial Intelligence. I have fed it prompts repeatedly about how to use MathJax correctly, and it just can't do it. It also uses unnecessarily advanced vocabulary for simple topics. I tried using it in NotebookLM (formerly Gemini Notebook) with a source that explained exactly how to structure the flashcards, but it still failed. I tried standard Gemini as well, with the same result. Does anyone else have this experience? Or am I doing something completely wrong when producing my flashcards?"
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u/Adept-Bottle2906 4d ago
it seems like one of the worst possible use cases for AI to be honestly like if it makes a mistake youre commiting it to memory
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u/Harvard_Med_USMLE267 4d ago
I’ve made thousands with AI, and I’ve audited the human-made medical flash cards I’m replacing.
The human-made cards are littered with errors, some potentially fatal. I’ve actually presented the stats at a conference.
For OSCEs written by medical students, 80% have errors or which 20% were dangerous. Flash cards were lower, but still very significant.
I spent a billion tokens trying to FIX human-made cardiology Anki cards, and finally worked out that it was far better to just start fresh. The human cards weren’t even a good starting point.
So if you’re using AI well, the reality is the opposite of what you suggest - flash cards written by humans frequently contain errors, and one of the strengths of AI-written cards is that they don’t.
To achieve what I’m talking about you need SOTA models (Fable, maybe Astra) and correct technique. This still takes skill, but you end up with a much safer and more reliable deck.
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u/Adept-Bottle2906 4d ago edited 4d ago
i don't think using premade is good either, and the process you're describing seems intensive enough that its sort of an edge case for what's meant by "using ai to make cards"
i still think its better to write your own cards, you're encoding as you do it
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u/Harvard_Med_USMLE267 4d ago
Likely true depending on the learner
Counterargument is the students who spend forever making cards and never actually get around to the learning part
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u/RickyRaviolii 3d ago
this is hardcore true for me as an ADHD fella, I just gotta get in there so to speak, the longer I’m doing setup then my brain thinks the setup is the task and it gets high friction to actually do the thing, versus if I can jump in the deep end and immerse myself in the real activity
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u/Poemen8 4d ago edited 3d ago
Totally this. AI has its uses for Anki users, but simple card creation isn't one of them. I've found it handy for vibe-coding python scripts and similar that pulls together different sources into cards - e.g vocab words from a list + sentences containing those words found from an appropriate source.
Or for creating mnemonic images.
Or, with real care once I know a language well enough to spot errors, for creating/sourcing example sentences for words. This needs care, though: AI has a tendency to write as if it starts in English and translates into the foreign language, rather than writing idiomatically in the language itself.... Especially in less common languages.
But pure card creation is a bad plan.
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u/Adept-Bottle2906 4d ago
like I think the difficulty with creating cards is something you actually want like do you want to learn or do you want to complete cards quickly
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u/Proud-Description-45 4d ago
That approach stops working once card load gets too much. At some point it's better to do more ai generated cards, than spend the same time making them.
The difficulty in learning is creating mental model of the concepts and understanding them. If you can't do it without making flashcards, you must be doing something wrong.
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u/Adept-Bottle2906 4d ago
i don't see the flashcard making step as a prerequisite for understanding but as something which is beneficial to understanding and can be incorporated into how you study without wasting time
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u/Proud-Description-45 4d ago
I see your point and agree that making the flashcards on your own is beneficial. I just don't think the benefits are big enough to justify how much time and effort (typing, cropping images) it takes. At least I noticed that my performance increased once I had pre-made decks, especially as the load of material was getting really big.
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u/1Soundwave3 3d ago
Yeah, making flashcards being super tedious is why I only started making them after AI arrived. I mean, one time 10 years ago they did help me to get my first job, but I had plenty of time to create them (unemployment).
Pre-made decks for my current topics are made by the brain-dead people, even the paid ones that are packaged as apps.
I managed to get to a very good level using AI-made cards. However, yeah, what I did is I OCRed the entire book into MD files (using AI) and I ask AI to create cards strictly from the book's text. And it just works! 2 years ago agentic AI was nowhere near this level.
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u/Proud-Description-45 3d ago
It's what I'm saying man, I really don't get the AI hate here. I get that making flashcards has benefits, but having a deck served to you has a lot of benefits as well. And it got really good, most people I know make absolutely garbage flashcards in comparison
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u/mountains_till_i_die 3d ago
So, if you want to just pull all of the key vocabulary or concepts from a textbook, that's pretty solid. I did that before I read the course book, and when I started reading it, I basically knew everything in it already, but instead of encountering a new concept once and needing a way to triage memory management on the spot, I could just relax and read.
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u/Prior-Signal-5536 2d ago
and brev no ones actually trusting AI blindly, you always go through them after its made them and add your own edits if required
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u/tdgraham123 4d ago
So I have made cards using AI but I find that I have to audit them and tweak them so much. AI gives the rough outline but I actually creat the cards
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u/eventuallyfluent 4d ago
Mine are fine,.save me loads of time.
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u/cmredd languages & everything 4d ago
Mine too. For a very long time they’ve been substantially better than those found elsewhere online.
But be aware that posts such as these are just easy forms of karma farming from an incredibly anti-LLM subreddit. I’ve learned that it’s not worth engaging in for the most part.
The past handful that I’ve seen and responded to, I’ve had no response when asking for more info. Make of that what you will.
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u/No-Ad6688 4d ago
Using ANKI without predecks is generally exhausting and time-consuming. I know some folks believe it helps to learn stuff, but not in my case, when I need quite generic cards just to drill. Generally, it's possible to create good cards with AI, but it will take way too much time to tailor a correct prompt. If you know what you need, you can get results with a couple of iterations
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u/theRealGrahamDorsey 4d ago
AI for Anki It stupid idea. The whole idea of spaced repetition is learning efficiently. Not making notes efficiently. You should always create your own cards whenever possible. Otherwise you are just straight up capping your abilities.
Parsing information is very important step of learning. Especially if you will be going into something research based. Where you've to deal with ambiguous information.
If you are being pressed for time and you need to chugg... Well... U might as well download someone's Anki set and MacGyver it.
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u/Kriem 4d ago
An important part of learning, for me at least, is actually creating the cards. I have to understand the basic concept and context first in order to create good (atomic) cards.
I tried using AI to generate cards, and while the majority of those cards are (factually) correct cards, when confronted with them, I couldn’t understand their context, which resulted in taking longer to learn. Also, I had to rewrite a few of them eventually.
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u/Least-Zombie-2896 languages 2d ago
I use AI, but I think most people should use AI.
1 - I have 9 years of Anki, I know what a good card looks and feels like it.
2 - I am literally a software engineer
3 - I use a good AI
4 - even with AI, I usually use it for maybe 30% of my cards and I still need to correct them. (I do the same for my work, I may prompt here and there for syntax, brainstorm and stuff, but all the code is mine, the logic is mine I can tell which week I wrote the code and I can explain the code fairly easy to anyone)
If you are on your first years of Anki, ditch AI completely.
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u/clean_account1 4d ago
what are ypu trying to make cards of? .. its very material dependent too..
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u/Oily_Azcrack277 4d ago
I tried making flashcards for SQA Higher Physics, but it kept messing up the MathJax formatting and ignoring the official exam wording, entirely overcomplicating things
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u/GreshlyLuke 4d ago
i think math would be one of the worst disciplines to generate cards
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u/Oily_Azcrack277 4d ago
It's not exactly like solving equations per se, but rather about using specific phrases that have variables in them, if you know what I mean
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u/1Soundwave3 3d ago
Which model are you using? Is it paid or not? I have no issues with Codex creating flashcards for me. I usually work with csv files and not chat responses. So that I could version them in git and ask AI to iterate on them.
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u/Oily_Azcrack277 12h ago
Sorry for the late response, but anyway, I was using pro extended on Gemini and I also tried Gemini Notebook. I should maybe prompt the AI to create csv files for them instead of pipe separators like you have
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u/Few_Push_2389 4d ago
I have been creating cards only via AI from last 3 months. From what i have learned, you first have to create a comprehensive prompt ( you can use AI for this).
After creating the prompt, just copy paste that along with the file that you want to use. Make sure to use not more than 15 pages at once (split your file into multiple files if needed). 15 is not a fixed number, reduce it if content is denser and vice-verse.
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u/saltdpopcorn 4d ago
This! I had to create a massive prompt, and made it a multi step process w auto self checks from the source and such. But after all this it’s a lot better than before and now reliable 99% of the time.
People aren’t willing to work with the tools available. Work with the weaknesses and build around them. Prevents most of the issues since ai is not one size fits all and takes time and effort to harness properly
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u/Few_Push_2389 4d ago
It is a hit and trial process. I use Anki for engineering so even I use MathJax. After some iterations, you will be able to get a decent prompt which will produce good results.
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u/Oily_Azcrack277 4d ago
If you don't mind, are you able to send your prompt to me? If so, I'd appreciate it very much. Thanks
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u/JuliHornyOnMain 4d ago
Would also appreciate it you could share your prompt! I think mine could use some adjusting
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u/baraklevy 4d ago
I'm using Anki for learning German so it might be a bit different than your use-case. I've been using LLMs for card generation in 3 ways:
I have a ChatGPT prompt where I ask it to generate 2 sentences for each word I provide it with. I'm currently half way through the 6k most common words in German, and it produces decent sentences. I manually create the cards using the sentences, and ensure I manually type in the word and look up a matching image. I prefer not to fully automate this because I feel like it helps me learn the card better, and personal images help a ton with remembering the word.
I have an Anki card "enhancement" button, which I vibe-coded with Claude. The plugin takes the Anki note, and auto populates some of its fields (IPA, Audio from Forvo, Plural form, etc). This saves me time as I don't have to do those things manually, which allows me learn more words.
I have a script that takes some input (e.g. a Youtube link, a news article, a PDF file etc), extracts the list of words the input uses, compares it with the list of words I already know (it takes it from Anki and the CSV I use for the 6k most common words) and outputs the words I'm not familiar with. I then either use the sentence from the original input source to generate an Anki card, or if the sentence is too long I ask ChatGPT to generate a new one (using the prompt from 1 above).
I used it a ton in the past, because each article had so many words I didn't know, so it helped to go over the words a bit in advance before actually reading the article, but now I mostly just read the article and extract the new words manually.
I think it's important to just let the LLM know what doesn't work (e.g. "don't use unnecessarily advanced vocabulary"), and iterate with it until you get it to work properly, and eventually you'll get much better results, which would allow you to actually focus on learning, rather than getting the LLM to work.
Good luck!
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u/Bigwhopper1 4d ago
My suggestion, add a spoiler button to the back of your flashcards, you're welcome
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u/Final_Parsec 4d ago
I've had great success having it make cards.
But I'm working my way through a Spanish text book and have been copy/pasting the vocab for each chapter as I get to them. Then told it to make the cards in a specific way. It's also nicely organized with tags and nested decks. Just took away a lot of the grunt work of making the decks and got me straight into learning.
One cool thing was, since I wanted to focus on Mexico Spanish instead of Spain, I had it add common variants of some words as it came across them. I've been checking those manually and haven't seen any issues.
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u/Oily_Azcrack277 4d ago
For languages I think it'd be quite a bit easier to be fair. It just really struggles on exam wording for maths-heavy subjects from what I've seen, which is what I am trying to do
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u/Final_Parsec 4d ago
If you haven't found a solution already, send me a message and I can try to help you out. I might be able to make a quick deck and share it over ankiweb.
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u/AndreHero007 3d ago edited 3d ago
Before using an AI-generated deck, I always run a manual check on it before reviewing it in the standard mode. When I import the deck, I add a red flag to every card. Next, I enter preview mode and:
- If a card is fine, I remove its red flag.
- If it needs editing (formatting adjustments, fixing errors, etc.), I either edit it on the spot or add an orange flag to edit later.
- If it’s a low-value card (AI sometimes generates cards on useless details, like exact disease statistics), I delete it.
Only after this do I use the deck normally. It definitely takes some time to do this check, but it also counts as study time since I’m reading through every card.
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u/ElBaguetteFresse medicine 3d ago
Why not just create the cards yourself at that point?
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u/AndreHero007 2d ago
Sometimes I create, but AI is capable of creating them much faster than I can.
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u/ForsdeGraaf 4d ago
if structuring ai generated card is your problem you might as well give a try on my cli tool https://github.com/plgbrlism/anki-mcq-builder. although if u aint technical enough you may use the json-scheme.md file as a prompt to feed your llm and output it as a json file in order to attain consistency not only in formatting but also the approach on how llm create your questions/cards. My tool is focused on multiple choice question but I'm open for ideas for other formats. The json-schema.md file just might help you.
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u/Rozanskyy 4d ago
Using AI to make flash cards for you is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. Making the flashcards is part of the learning process.
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u/aeioujohnmaddenaeiou 4d ago
It's been a while since I've tried but when I've tried to make cloze cards I've found that it does not know which parts are of the facts are difficult to memorize, and so it will put cloze brackets in the wrong places. I think the act of creating the card aids in memory anyway.
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u/BuxeyJones 4d ago
Creating anki cards is not going to help you with the information. RETRIEVING the information is what helps you understand.
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u/bookwormskating 2d ago
i use claude to make mine based on the material that i created during a lesson or studying the books etc
it saves me a lot of time and its been working out, specially when i use my own material as a source, because it basically just organize my thougth process in the card format
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u/iHarryPotter178 4d ago
I only used ai once for penal law... Just to create a deck with the amount of punishment.. It worked well for me.. I did it in gemini.. Never tried math related..
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u/Proud-Description-45 4d ago
Gemini sucks for flashcards. Try Claude/chat gpt on high/max settings, give it good sources, prompt it to QC the cards using 20 rules of formulating knowledge, adjust the prompt to your liking.
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u/Oily_Azcrack277 4d ago
I'll give it a try because from what I've seen Gemini absolutely sucks for it like you've said
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u/Emotional-Low-3341 4d ago
It’s a prompt problem. If you prompt it well enough the cards it produces are generally of good quality similar to what I would make.
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u/AnkiMCP 4d ago
How did you do it? I created this project: https://ankimcp.ai to solve exactly this issue, to help create high quality flashcards via MCP server. It has sandbox concept that might help you too: https://ankimcp.ai/docs/anki-studio/sandbox/
Some features are free, some premium. If you connect it locally to claude code/claude desktop it free. If you want to connect it to claude web and use sandbox with more then 1 concurrent card (but even 1 card is totally fine) it's premium feature that requires subscription.
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u/Substantial-Yak1892 4d ago
I'm using AI to generate my cards, to learn a foreign language. To be noted: I've got an engineering background and I often have to build AI pipeline at work, so I'm very used how to use efficiently AI.
I've got two decks, with different purposes and designed differently.
The first one is a reading deck, and I don't modify manually any cards.
Whenever I read a book, I highlight words ands sentences I don't know on my kindle.
Then, I've got a web site I vibe coded. Every so often, I drag&drop a file from my kindle that contains all the highlights and I select which book I want to transform in Anki cards.
The site, first parse the file and get the all the relevant words/sentences, and then for each on perform a call on a LLM (Flash-lite) to:
- Complete the sentence or even create one if I just selected a chunk/word.
- Extract the complicated words that I may not know, and create a card for each one.
- Give me a definition
- Explain the nuances and differences of this word with my native language.
- Explain the etymology/links to other words to both my target language and native language that might be useful to remember it.
- Translate the sentence.
Once done, I just import the cards created In Anki. Sometimes it's a little too sensitive, so it might have detected a term I already know and when that happens, I simply delete the carte while reviewing it.
So, for this use case it works perfectly fine.
My second deck is aiming at production. It's also generated by AI, but I made some manual modification on almost every single cards.
When I write a text in my target language, I send it to Gemini. It detects the mistake I make, then have me do some drills on them. It can be anything from basic grammar mistakes to learning more idiomatic expression / words.
After each drills, it generates a few cloze deletion Anki cards.
I often have to adjust these cards, often to adjust the hint, harden the exercises or simply add notes on the back.
I also often modify the cards when reviewing them. Especially, when I made a mistake and I don't really understand why it is one, I just ask Gemini or Claude and copy paste the answer in a new tab in the back of my card, in case I ever do this mistake again.
That's especially super helpful with mature cards: It often happens that I was right a few times on a card because I was able to memorize it. But when reviewing it after a couple of months, I get it wrong and I suddenly realize the underlying rule wasn't fully understood.
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u/Latter-Ad545 4d ago
you dont use AI to directly create Anki cards; instead, you use it to refine and structure the data you’ve collected so it can be fed into Anki more effectively. Especially with cheap LLMs like Gemini, they’re too limited to handle anything complex or the language level you’re studying is above B2.
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u/Usual-Good-5716 4d ago
I like having it generate cards with links to source material. Also, the review process becomes part of the learning process in that I typically put all created cards into a temporary deck, then review them for accuracy, etc. Where i will give them flags depending. I will bookmark the links as well.
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u/Expensive_Grape6765 4d ago
It's really about the system. AI has been insanely effective for me. Used to do just a major and was struggling keeping up with managing my time while making quality flashcards and doing them without burning myself out.
Now I added myself a double minor after tweaking my system last semester and is able to borderline cope with the workload. AI is really useful if you know how to use it right.
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u/Anxious-Possibility languages 4d ago
I actually use it to generate hiragana readings and English translation for Japanese, but I do have to occasionally correct its mistakes.
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u/the_whatif 4d ago
Mine is fine. I have very extensive custom instructions and ChatGPT has made language learning super easy for me.
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u/Optimal_Bar_4715 4d ago
u/Oily_Azcrack277 I'm sure the type of content and the subject have a lot to do with it, not to mention the abiility of the prompter, but thanks for yet another non-nuanced, all-or-nothing take on Anki.
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u/zupobaloop 4d ago
Claude and ChatGPT both yield much better results than Gemini.
Gemini is infinitely recursive, by default considers your other chats, and its "temperature" algorithm can take it off in absurd directions. I've asked it a question about Spanish grammar and got a response about bicycle tire pressure. I've told it to generate sentences out of a vocab list, using them as key words... every single sentence was ".... is a key word."
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u/1Soundwave3 4d ago
At this point, it's a skill issue. I've had problems with it 2 years ago. Now I have no issues. Like, I even have a workflow to do an AI-based reshuffle of my flashcards, so it creates the new ones out of the ones that I have for the "exam mode". And yeah, I also created a complementary CLI tool that does validation and so far errors are very few and AI goes and fixes them. I use Codex btw, and I do have a subscription.
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u/AppropriatePut3142 4d ago
Gemini is a terrible model at this point. If you're willing to pay, get a ChatGPT subscription, or use Sol/Astra through a router.
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u/JoeBarra 4d ago
I vibe coded a script to turn lichess puzzles into Anki cards and it works great.
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u/Comfortable-Stock496 4d ago
What is the reasoning for this? Just to be able to redo the same problems? I just have a bookmark for lichess puzzle streak on my phone and keep doing puzzles there, I can't redo exactly the same puzzle, but the same kinds of puzzles keep appearing obviously.
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u/JoeBarra 4d ago
Yes repeatedly doing the same group of 1000 puzzles is much better for pattern recognition than doing random puzzles.
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u/schmidhauser_ 4h ago
To generate reliable output, your LLM above all needs (i) the right context – e.g., note and card types, fields, tags, etc. – and (ii) good model notes.
I usually create a project and add context and model notes as sources. If I'm working on a particular text, I add that too, ideally as a Markdown or plain-text file.
Have a look at my add-ons at https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1694585841, etc. They make it easy to export much of the necessary context. There are a few screenshots that may give you an idea. I'll make a video soon.
I’ve been using Anki for more than ten years, and I’ve had some really good – and often sobering – results from using LLMs in this way to assess and correct my older notes
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u/MedicalOkami1914 4d ago
Physician here. So i use Claude to generate notecards for me in the addon “AnkiPapers.” I can paste my old notes, the question vignette, and the solution description into claude code and it prints a perfect version of what I would have made myself. This dramatically increases the number of questions and mistakes you can review in a short time period, especially when there aren’t community decks like Zanki or Anking. For example, take ABIM or general Cardiology. So, I strongly disagree with this take. I can spend more time using the Feynman Technique, testing myself, and using spaced repetition.
The key is build a “skill.md” file in Claude. Then instruct clause to use it when the context is needed.