This AI feature on Duolingo could give your language teaching a boost

“Duolingo is really focused on AI right now,” Klinton Bicknell, the head of AI at Duolingo, told me in an interview this month.

The company said it has invested in AI capabilities since its launch in 2012, but advances in generative AI have boosted its recent efforts. These advances helped develop the features Explain my answer and my role playand the AI-powered function Video callwhich was released on iOS in September.

Video Call is a GPT-4 based feature that allows you to video call with one of Duolingo’s characters named Lily. You and Lily then have a conversation in the language you’re learning. Duolingo announced Thursday that the feature is now available on Android devices and can be used for conversations in additional languages such as German, Italian and Portuguese on all devices, as well as Japanese and Korean on iOS.

The company also said Lily is now more expressive on these calls. You can also access call logs to review the call and Lily will call you unexpectedly instead of you always calling her. But like Explain My Answer and Role Play, Video Call is only available on Duolingo Maxwhat costs $30 per month or $168 per year.

Artificial intelligence has caused a lot of stir in recent years as it has found its way into more and more products with varying degrees of success. While many People don’t care about AI features The global market for AI in mobile apps on products such as smartphones is expected to be worth $250 billion by 2033, according to the market and research group market. And similar to other companies AdobeDuolingo is doubling down on technology.

Video calls focus on conversation in the language you’re learning, while other lessons on Duolingo revolve around reading and understanding in the language you want. While reading and listening comprehension are beneficial when learning a second language, says a study published in Psychological science suggests that learning a language (writing or speaking) can be a more effective learning method than just practicing comprehension.

“Producing language is an incredibly powerful learning experience (when the production involves producing the language itself and receiving feedback),” he said wrote the study authors.

Bicknell said Duolingo had experimented with a feature that let you converse with another person in the language you were learning, but the company did not pursue that feature.

“When you have a conversation with people (in another language), most adults are kind of embarrassed,” Bicknell said. “When you talk to an AI, it doesn’t judge you… so you can have the freedom to just try things.”

I used the feature a few times and at first it still felt silly, even though I knew I was talking to an AI. Lily has a robotic-sounding voice similar to Siri or Alexa, so speaking to her felt impersonal. During the first few calls we also talked about my experiences learning languages, which I found uncomfortable.

After the first few calls, Lily asked me about books I was reading and pets. I also asked Lily questions like you would in any conversation, such as whether she has pets. Lily said she has an old dog named Harold who she said sleeps most of the day.

Our conversations weren’t too long – about a minute long – and they weren’t too complicated. Lily asked me a lot of questions about myself and I answered her and asked her a few questions. Lily then said something like “I have to go”, we said goodbye and the conversations ended.

With each call, I found it easier to talk to Lily and more comfortable with the conversations. The calls also helped me break out of memorizing some lessons and forced me to really think about what I should say next and how I should say it. This feature makes me wonder if Duolingo will ever reconsider the idea of calling another person for advanced learners in the future. For now, video calls with Lily seem to be a helpful tool when learning a new language.

And some executives at Duolingo said video calling is the kind of teaching tool the company has dreamed of.

“It offers the kind of learning opportunities that were previously only available to those who could afford to travel or hire a tutor,” said Luis von Ahn, co-founder and CEO of Duolingo, in a press release.

While video calling can help you learn a language, some people may still be wary of using the tool due to privacy concerns about AI. More than a third of people said so CNET in a poll that privacy was a key concern for them when it comes to AI.

Duolingo said that it does not take people’s sensitive information and use it to train its AI model, but that it uses people’s data to tailor lessons 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. “We try to figure out when someone has a call that isn’t going as well as we would have liked, what caused it, and then try to fix the problem to make it even better for future releases.”

The company said the app will ask a random group of people for permission to save audio recordings of their video calls. Bicknell said there are additional restrictions on who can access these records.

Duolingo also said it has safeguards in place to protect people from inappropriate content.

The company said every video call has a goal and each person can get there in many different ways. However, if a person goes too far astray, Lily the cartoon avatar will try to steer the conversation in a different direction. If the person continues to try to steer the conversation into inappropriate places, Lily will end the conversation.

Some AI can also hallucinate and sometimes give false information, but Duolingo said that video calls are not hallucinations.

“This role is not about giving you information,” Bicknell said. “It’s just Lily talking to you.”

Unfortunately, if you encounter an issue with video calling, Duolingo says there is no way to report a problem within the feature. Duolingo’s other AI features, like Explain My Answer, provide ways to report problems, so this seems like a strange exclusion.

Still, Duolingo said the general response to video calling has been positive and the company hopes the feature will encourage people to continue learning. The goal is to “simulate natural dialogue and give people that personalized, interactive practice environment,” Bicknell said. “People have said things like, ‘This is what Duolingo was missing.'”

You can find more information about Duolingo here The free version of the app prepared me for a trip to Italy and ours Language learning app review. You can also check out ours best language learning apps.