“Duolingo at this point is really into AI,” Klinton Bicknell, Duolingo's head of AI, told me in an interview this month.
The company says it has invested in AI features since it launched in 2012, but advances in generative AI have driven its latest efforts. Those advances helped create features Explain My Answer and Roleplayand the AI-powered feature Video Callwhich launched on iOS in September.
Video Call is a feature powered by GPT-4 that allows you to video call one of Duolingo's characters named Lily. You and Lily will have a conversation in the language you are learning. Duolingo said Thursday that the feature is now available on Android devices, and can be used to communicate in more languages, such as German, Italian and Portuguese, on all devices and Japanese and Korean on iOS.
The company also says that Lily is now more expressive in these calls, you can also access call transcripts to help you review your call and Lily will call you out of the blue compared to when you always call her . But like Explain My Answer and Roleplay, Video Call is only available on Duolingo Maxwhich is worth $30 a month or $168 a year.
Artificial intelligence has made a lot of news in the past few years as it has infiltrated more and more products, with varying degrees of success. While many People are not interested in AI features in products like smartphones, the AI in mobile apps global market is expected to be worth $250 billion by 2033, according to the market and research group market. And like other companies like AdobeDuolingo doubles down on technology.
Video Call focuses on communicating in whatever language you're learning while other Duolingo lessons revolve around reading and understanding your language of choice. While reading and listening comprehension are beneficial in learning a second language, a study published in Psychological Science suggests that doing a language (writing or speaking it) can be a more effective way to learn than just practicing comprehension.
“Language production is an incredibly powerful learning experience (when the production involves producing the language itself and you are given feedback),” the wrote the study's authors.
Bicknell said Duolingo experimented with a feature where you could talk to other people in the language you're learning, but the company didn't pursue that feature.
“When you talk to someone [in another language] with humans, most adults are a little shy,” Bicknell said. “If you're talking to an AI, they're not judging you … so you're free to try things.”
I used the feature a few times and it still felt silly at first even though I knew I had AI. Lily has a robotic sounding voice similar to Siri or Alexa, so talking to her feels impersonal. We also talked about my experience learning the language on the first calls, which sounded awkward.
After the first couple of calls, Lily started asking me questions about the books I read and pets. I also asked Lily questions like you would in any conversation, like if she had any pets. Lily says she has an old dog named Harold who she says 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 about myself and my response and asked her some questions. Then Lily would say something like, “I have to go,” and we'd say goodbye and the calls ended.
With each call, Lily was easier to talk to, and I felt more comfortable in the conversations. The calls also helped get rid of the repetitive memorization of some lessons, and forced me to think about what to say next and how to say it. This feature makes me wonder if Duolingo will revisit the idea of peer-to-peer calls for advanced learners in the future. So far, Video Calls with Lily sounds like a useful tool for learning a new language.
And some leaders at Duolingo say Video Call is the kind of teaching tool the company has been dreaming of.
“This provides the kind of learning opportunity that was 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 news release.
While Video Call can help you on your language learning journey, some people may still be wary of using the tool due to AI privacy concerns. More than a third of people said CNET in a survey that privacy is a major concern for them when it comes to AI.
Duolingo says it doesn't collect and use people's sensitive information and use it to train its AI model, but it does use 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's working, what's not,” Bicknell said. “Trying to figure out when people might have a call that doesn't match what we want, what led to that and then use that to try to fix it to make it better for future versions.”
The company did say that the app will ask a random set of people for permission to keep audio recordings of their Video Calls. Bicknell said there are additional restrictions on who can access these recordings.
Duolingo also says it has protections in place to protect people from inappropriate content.
The company says that every Video Call has a purpose, and each person can get to that purpose in any number of ways. However, if someone strays too far, Lily, the cartoon avatar, will try to bring back the conversation. If the person keeps trying to take the conversation to inappropriate places, Lily will end the call.
Some AIs can also hallucinate and give false information at times, but Duolingo says it's not concerned with Video Call hallucinations.
“This feature is not about giving you information,” Bicknell said. “Lily is the only one talking to you.”
Unfortunately, if you run into a Video Call issue, Duolingo says, there's no way to report an issue within the feature. Other Duolingo AI features, like Explain My Answer, have ways to report issues so it seems strange not to be included.
Despite this, Duolingo says the overall reaction to Video Call 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 a personalized, interactive training environment,” Bicknell said. “People said things like, 'This is what Duolingo is missing.'”
For more on Duolingo, here's how great the The free version of the app prepared me for a trip to Italy and our language learning app review. You can also check out our best language learning apps.
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