Duolingo Chatbot: Practice Foreign Language Conversation Skills

Millions of people have used Duolingo’s free mobile application and website to learn foreign languages thanks to its ease of use and motivational educational structure. With efforts to constantly improve its language-learning capabilities, Duolingo recently added a chatbot feature that lets users interact with artificial users through conversation.

The artificial intelligence–powered bots have distinct personalities that reply and encourage conversation with learners, and can step in to help language learners if they sense they are having difficulty. The conversation feature is one of the best ways language learners can immerse themselves in the language and advance their skills, forcing users to draw words and phrases from memory.

Speaking with locals can be intimidating for new learners of a language, so the chatbot can serve as an intermediate step to help prepare users for actual human interaction by encouraging progress with the aid of a chat feature.

Currently, the bots speak and users can type their replies, but Duolingo hopes users will eventually be able to reply to the bots using their own voices. At first, the chatbot will only be available for French, Spanish and German learners, but Duolingo has plans to expand to Portuguese, Italian and English in the near future.