This AI Feature on Duolingo Could Give Your Language Lessons a Boost
“Duolingo is really all-in on AI right now,” Klinton Bicknell, Duolingo’s head of AI, told me in an interview this month.
The company said it has been investing in AI capabilities since its launch in 2012, but advances in generative AI drove its latest efforts. These advances helped create these capabilities Explain my answers and role playand AI-driven features video calllaunched on iOS in September.
Video Calling is a GPT-4 supported feature that allows you to make a video call with a Duolingo character named Lily. You and Lily then have a conversation in the language you’re learning. Duolingo said Thursday that the feature is now available on Android devices and can be used to hold conversations in more languages, such as German, Italian and Portuguese, on all devices, and in Japanese and Korean on iOS.
The company also says Lily is now more expressive on these calls, and you can also access call history to help you review your calls, and Lily will call you out of the blue instead of you always calling her. But like Explain My Answer and Role Play, video calling only works with Duolingo Maxwhich costs $30 per month or $168 per year.
Artificial intelligence has made a lot of news over the past few years as it has trickled into more products, with varying degrees of success. Although there are many People are not interested in AI capabilities The global market for artificial intelligence in mobile applications, in products such as smartphones, is expected to be worth $250 billion by 2033, according to market and research group data market. Similar to other companies adobeDuolingo is redoubling its efforts to develop this technology.
Video calls focus on having a conversation in whatever language you’re learning, while other lessons on Duolingo revolve around reading and understanding the language you want. Although reading and listening comprehension are beneficial in learning a second language, published in psychological science suggests that producing a language (writing or speaking) may be a more effective way of learning than simply practicing comprehension.
“Making language is a very powerful learning experience (when making involves generating language yourself and having feedback given to you),” The study authors wrote.
Duolingo tried a feature that would let you talk to another person in the language you’re learning, but the company didn’t pursue it, Bicknell said.
“Most adults feel a little embarrassed when you talk to a human[in another language],” Bicknell said. “If you talk to an AI, they won’t judge you…so you’re free to try.”
I used the feature a few times, and despite knowing I was talking to an artificial intelligence, I still felt silly at first. Lily’s voice sounds robotic, similar to Siri or Alexa, so talking to her feels impersonal. We also talked about my language learning experience in the first few calls, which felt awkward.
After the first few calls, Lily started asking about the books I was reading and about my pets. I also asked Lily questions like I would in any conversation, such as if she had pets. Lily said she had an old dog named Harold who she said slept most of the day.
Our conversation wasn’t too long—about a minute—and it wasn’t too complicated either. Lily asked me a lot of questions about myself and I answered and asked her some. Then Lily would say something like “I gotta go” and we’d say our goodbyes and the call would be over.
With each call I felt it became easier to talk to Lily and I felt more comfortable with the conversation. These calls also helped me break away from memorizing some lessons and forced me to really think about what I was going to say next and how I was going to say it. This feature makes me wonder if Duolingo will reconsider the idea of calling others for advanced learners in the future. For now, video calls with Lily feel like a useful tool for learning a new language.
Some Duolingo leaders say video calls are a coveted teaching tool for the company.
“It provides learning opportunities that were previously only available to those who could afford to travel or hire a tutor,” Duolingo co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn said in a press release.
While video calls may help you on your language learning journey, some people may still be wary of using the tool due to privacy concerns with artificial intelligence. More than one-third told A CNET survey When it comes to artificial intelligence, privacy is their top concern.
Instead of taking and using people’s sensitive information and using it to train its AI models, Duolingo says it uses people’s data to tailor courses and video calls to each person’s needs.
“We’re really just using people’s data to figure out what works and what doesn’t,” Bicknell said. “Trying to figure out when people might get a call that’s not going as well as we’d like, what’s causing that, and then use that to try to fix it and make it better in future releases.”
The company did say that the app will ask a random group of people for permission to keep recordings of their video calls. Bicknell said there are other restrictions on who can access the recordings.
Duolingo also said there are safeguards in place to protect people from inappropriate content.
The company says each video call has a goal, and each person can achieve it in multiple ways. However, if one goes too far astray, the cartoon character Lily will try to steer the conversation back. If the other person keeps trying to steer the conversation into something inappropriate, Lily will end the call.
Some AI can sometimes hallucinate and give incorrect information, but Duolingo says it has nothing to do with hallucinations in video calls.
“This feature is not intended to provide you with information,” Bicknell said. “It’s just Lily talking to you.”
Unfortunately, if you do encounter video calling issues, Duolingo says there’s no way to report an issue with the feature. Other Duolingo AI features (such as “Explain My Answers”) do have methods for reporting problems, so this feels like an odd exclusion.
Still, Duolingo said the overall response to video calls has been positive, and the company hopes the feature will encourage people to keep learning. The goal is to “simulate natural conversation and provide people with a personalized, interactive practice environment,” Bicknell said. “People have said, ‘This is what Duolingo is missing.'”
For more information about Duolingo, see the following: The free version of the app prepared me for my trip to Italy and our Reviews of Language Learning Apps. You can also check out our The best language learning apps.
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