Summary
- Google is testing a new feature called “Speaking practice” in Search, allowing users to chat with an AI bot on their phone to improve their English skills.
- This feature is currently available in Argentina, Colombia, India, Mexico, Venezuela, and Indonesia for users in Search Labs.
- Through AI-driven exercises, users can practice speaking naturally, learning new words and phrases without the pressure of conversing with a real person.
When you’re picking up a new language, it’s key to dive into its books, music, or movies. Chatting up native speakers is a big deal too—it helps you catch onto the culture’s slang and everyday lingo. But let’s be real: hopping over to the language’s homeland isn’t always doable, and tackling foreign media when you’re just starting out can be rough. That’s where Google steps in. The search giant is testing out a new feature in Search that lets people chat with an AI bot on their phone to practice their English skills.
The new experimental feature is called “Speaking practice,” as spotted by @howfxr on Twitter. The AI bot helps non-English speakers practice by asking them to say sentences with specific words. For now, it’s only available in Argentina, Colombia, India, Mexico, Venezuela, and Indonesia for people using Search Labs, as per TechCrunch.
In October 2023, Google rolled out a similar interactive AI feature for users in those same countries. It would throw a prompt your way, ask for a spoken English reply, then give it a rating along with some pointers for improvement. But the new feature ditches the rating method for a more natural conversation experience with an AI bot. This means people can chat back and forth.
The aim is to level up users’ conversational English skills through AI-driven exercises. By practicing with the bot, users can learn new words and phrases naturally, all without the pressure of talking to a real person. Hopefully, this gets them ready to talk to real people instead of just bots down the line.
In a screenshot posted on X, one of the conversation starters goes like this: “I’m sad because I lost my favorite sweater at the park yesterday.” Now, to keep the chat going, the user needs to say something using the words “love,” “sad,” and “sorry.” Another prompt, this time about getting fit, needs a response with “exercise,” “heart,” and “tired.”
Duolingo’s been there, done that with AI chatbots for languages
AI-powered language learning isn’t a new concept. Duolingo, probably the go-to language learning app for many, introduced an AI chatbot a few years ago and even plugged in GPT-4 last year. But unlike Duolingo, Google doesn’t come with a structured curriculum or a system that guides learners through different levels.
It remains unclear when Speaking practice might go live for everyone or if it’ll expand to cover other languages in the future. Hopefully, with more testing, Google will unleash this AI chatbot to help everyone level up their English (and maybe other languages too).
