The techbro asswipes that run Duolingo have been making a lot of noise about AI lately, boasting about how much they’re going to use it while firing all of the actual human beings who used to make their lessons

Their newest AI feature is a new lesson type called Video Calls where you chat with an AI bot in your target language. The bot asks you questions about basic topics and then does follow-up questions based on your answers while reacting and commenting on the stuff you say. It manages to kind of emulate the awkwardness of conversation practice in an actual language class with some rando you don’t know too well

I’ve only done a few of these because it feels really weird and creepy talking to a cartoon character on your phone that’s actually just a mask for an electricity-wasting corpo machine. Anyway, the AI just randomly brought up my pet that I mentioned a few weeks ago the last time I did one of these lessons. So yes, the Duolingo chatbot retains any information you disclose to it. Cool

The kicker is that this shit is gated behind the Duolingo Max paywall which costs 170 bucks a year, or 13 bucks a month (I run a modded apk with unlocked paid features, I’m not paying a cent for a fucking app)

Edit: I actually wouldn’t be opposed to paying for an app, it’s the subscription model I’m vehemently opposed to. I will never rent an app or program