Duolingo app now using AI for practice conversations - Arkansas Online

Duolingo, the language app, is now boosted by CHATGPT-4. Thanks to artificial intelligence, it's rolling out "Role Play."

Role Play drops you into an imaginary scenario in French or Spanish. For example, suppose you're bantering with a waitress in Barcelona while munching tapas. After your conversation, a robot will tell you how you did. It's part of the new "Duolingo Max" subscription for iPhone only, which is slowly rolling out across America.

In an article in a recent New Yorker magazine, the writer describes her mock session in a French cafe. After some exchanges, she said "I love you," to the AI machine. When it asked if she would rather spend evenings alone, she said she would if everyone was as dull as it was. "Bonsoir," it said.

Other apps let you chat with a native speaker, not a robotic one, but they're around $5 to $25 an hour. A "Duolingo Max" subscription is $30 a month for unlimited use or about $168 a year, a big difference. If you don't need that, the standard Duolingo is free, and the ad-free version is $7 a month.

Duolingo Max's other new feature, "Explain My Answer," explains both your mistakes and your lucky guesses. It takes the place of the forums that were shut down last year. I find the answers to questions on forums sometimes helpful, sometimes not. Hopefully, the robots are more accurate than the users were. At least they're prompt.

Duolingo's founder is the guy who invented the "Captcha" system for distinguishing humans from bots, and "ReCaptcha" for digitizing text. He won a genius award from the MacArthur Foundation before starting his company, so it's no wonder his product is so good. "I've been using it every day for years," my nephew told me. "And I'm still not even close to being done with all the Spanish lessons. With Babble or Rosetta Stone a user could probably get through all the lessons in six months."

AMAZON TIP

Some Amazon products are outrageously expensive, while others are the best deal in town. I'll never forget the $12 pink Kleenex, which I didn't buy, or the $7-a-bottle Girard champagne salad dressing, which I did. Worse, I once bought a Logitech webcam for $240 that a friend got for $18. Here's a tip: Look for "sold by Amazon." If it's a third-party seller, the price could be way out of line.

SHARING VIDEOS

YouTube videos are easy to share, by clicking the "share" button. But if you want to download them for watching offline, try YouTube Premium, for $12 a month.

Downloading YouTube videos with a free app is illegal. Nevertheless, ZDnet touts one called "ClipGrab." When I tried it, I got a Windows warning about a potential virus so I canceled the installation. This is not unusual. A lot of free YouTube downloaders have viruses, so watch out.

Many browser extensions are risky too.

Could Google successfully sue you for downloading their videos? According to experts on Quora.com, a witness would have to admit that streaming videos won't work unless the video is already downloaded as a temporary file. They say you can't get in trouble for re-downloading something that's already there.

SHARING FACEBOOK VIDEOS

My sister isn't on Facebook, so she often misses the videos of our niece at dance competitions. But now she won't have to. I recently found out how easy it is to share a Facebook video with a non-Facebook user. In the upper right corner of the video, click or tap the three vertical dots.

Then choose "copy link." The receiver does not have to join Facebook to view it.

WHAT'S DRAINING YOUR PHONE'S BATTERY

A reader said that Norton 360 was hogging 60% of her phone's battery life. Should she dump it?

The phone app gets great reviews and has nice features. Unless it's causing problems, I don't recommend uninstalling it. As for battery life, there are many worse offenders.

According to pCloud's report on "secret phone killers," there are three things to consider: the applications each app uses, such as location or camera, the battery usage and whether dark mode is available. In listing the 100 worst, Norton is nowhere to be seen. Instead, they point a finger at Fitbit, Verizon, Uber, Skype, and Facebook. WhatsApp is way up there too. But as a WhatsApp-using friend points out, his Motorola G Power can go four days on a single charge, even though he uses the app for over two hours every day. So these things need to be taken with a grain of salt.

These apps can also be memory hogs. If you search on "pCloud secret phone killers" you can find a list of the worst ones. The top three offenders include United Airlines, Lyft and Uber.

By the way, pCloud offers 10 gigabytes of free storage space, and is recommended by PC Magazine.

MONITORING THE ELDERLY

"Cherish Serenity" is a new $300 device for keeping seniors safe. It combines radar with artificial intelligence and an internet connection from AT&T to detect a senior's body position, movement, and biometrics. It needs no cameras or wearable trackers. If someone fell, it could sound the alert instantly.

The Serenity looks like a storage device or desktop speaker and requires a $40 a month subscription. The first sales will be to nursing home and assisted living facilities.

INTERNUT

AtonAton.com shows off a robotic basketball hoop. If it likes you, it will lower itself to make your dunk easier. But it's a tease. It can quickly pop up again. Unfortunately, it's not for sale.

Joy Schwabach can be reached by email at joy.schwabach@gmail.com.