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Would like to know what service you use, how much it costs, and whether it is working out well for you. Also, anything else you want to add.
Not asking for a philosophical debate about AI though.
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No, I tried it and it's not a good replacement. Both for how it talks about subjects (the errors and overconfidence we all know it has), and how it uses the language in a non-natural way. I'm saying this having already tried it for Spanish, English, and French. So, I wouldn't recommend AI to practice conversation. I mainly used local models, which are definitely less powerful, but also tried the popular ones. They definitely can help you in doing some research, yet you can't trust them blindly, since they tend to mix concepts and return "well worded errors". You already need to know about a subject in order to catch them. Which is no good for someone who wants to learn something.
Thanks for your reply. I hope they are improving!
None will ever replace speaking with native speakers of the target language. I sometimes use boraspeak it’s one of the best ones I have tried.
I have my ai set to the spanish So is my phone and computer. I just use it normally like I would in english. I dont try and have conversations with it. I have android phone and gemini pro. Just say ok google and ask it what you need to know.
I’ve been using LenguaTalk for the past two months - 10 min a day. It costs me $20 a month. I decided to use this bc it’s super convenient, and I can have conversation practice whenever I want. I think it’s working fine? I feel much more confident speaking since I’m actually practicing each day. I definitely do not think it’s a replacement for actual human conversation, but it’s got me practicing speaking regularly, and I’ve been more confident with say … speaking to my Uber driver that doesn’t speaking English about directions. Context on me: I’m mostly just doing this for fun and to be able to have conversations with folks in my city that can’t speak English well or when I’m traveling. I’m currently B1 level with a pretty extensive academic background in Spanish. I studied it in college and tutored it for a year (and taught some beginner classes along the way). I just didn’t get a ton of conversational (speaking and listening) practice during my academic career, so I’ve started working on those skills. Being able to use LenguaTalk has helped me a lot with the speaking confidence to start, but I’ll definitely be transitioning to more actual conversations more regularly. If you have any questions, let me know :)
Thanks. I will definitely give LenguaTalk some consideration. Do you know whether I would be able to do both French and Spanish at the same price?
I'm not so interested in AI for conversation. However, I would be *very* interested if anyone has used software to help people with pronunciation. I am not burdening a native speaker much when I make grammatical or wrong-word choices. But there's no way I would ever try particular words over and over with a human being, trying to get the sounds right. That's a reasonable tool for a computer. However, I do not know if they can be accurate enough able to diagnose properly: e.g., too much rolled r for that r in that word, that's way too much of a /v/ sound, etc.