Google Just Launched an AI-Powered Alternative to Duolingo

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Thanks to smart (and aggressive) marketing, Duolingo has established itself as one of the most popular language learning apps in the world. However, there’s some competition here: there are plenty of alternatives worth considering , and if you’re annoyed by Duolingo’s plans to phase out its contract workers in favor of using AI , you might want to take a closer look.

Duo now has a new competitor, but it certainly won’t replace AI detractors. It’s also far from an outsider, given that the service is owned by none other than Google. Yesterday, the company announced a new AI-powered language learning experience it calls Little Language Lessons . It’s not an app, but an experiment in Google Labs that offers bite-sized lessons and dives into several different languages.

This is how Google’s Little Language Lessons work now.

Using Google Duolingo Alternative

To get started, go to Little Language Lessons by Google Labs and sign in to your Google account. You’ll need to agree to a pop-up warning you that the feature is an early experiment using generative AI and may not always be accurate —a common flaw in AI tools in general .

Google offers 22 language options (including regional dialects of certain languages). These include:

  • Arab

  • Chinese (China)

  • Chinese (Hong Kong)

  • Chinese (Taiwan)

  • English (Australia)

  • English (UK)

  • English (US)

  • French (Canada)

  • French (France)

  • German

  • Greek

  • Hebrew

  • Hindi

  • Italian

  • Japanese

  • Korean

  • Portuguese (Brazil)

  • Portuguese (Portugal)

  • Russian

  • Spanish (Latin America)

  • Spanish (Spain)

  • Turkish

Once you take part, you’ll get to try three different types of lessons – or “experiments” as Google calls them. Experiment #001 is a Tiny Lesson that will help you use words, phrases, and grammar for any situation you can think of. You select a language, then enter “purpose or topic” in the appropriate text field. If you can’t think of anything, you can use one of Google’s automatically generated topics, such as “take a taxi,” “scuba diving,” or “go on a first date.” (Or take a taxi and go scuba diving on your first date.)

I went with a Portuguese (Portugal) and “took a taxi”. I clicked Create , and Tiny Lesson gave me three categories to work with: vocabulary, which listed different words I could use (“o táxi” for “taxi” or “o taxista” for “taxi driver”); Phrases such as “Pode chamar um táxi, por Favor?” for “Can you call a taxi please?”; and tips, such as explaining how to use the word “ter que” to express that I need to go somewhere. Any Portuguese words and phrases have speaker selection to hear the correct pronunciation.

“Experiment #002” is a “Slang Hang” that aims to teach you slang and expressions from the regions where the language you’re learning is spoken. Out of curiosity, I asked him to use American English for this. Slang Hang creates a story between two people and, following a short premise, creates a conversation between them to demonstrate how they can naturally talk to each other. Expressions and slang are underlined, and again you can click the speaker icon to hear them spoken.

What are your thoughts so far?

One side of the conversation is generated at a time, and you press spacebar to move on to the next person’s sentence. If you want a new story, you can press the refresh icon or press X to exit completely. (Slang Hang does not currently support Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Portugal), and Turkish.)

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Finally, there is “Experiment #003” or “Word Cam”. This feature allows you to take and share photos using the web app to learn how to talk about your surroundings. This works best on a smartphone or tablet, as otherwise you’ll only have access to your computer’s front-facing camera.

Once you grant camera access, take a photo of your surroundings. Word Cam then analyzes the image, highlights certain elements, and labels them with words in the target language. For example, I took a photo of a street corner and Word Cam labeled the car as “o carro”, the grass as “relva”, and the bush as “arbusto”. You can tap each word to open a full page dedicated to that word, as well as examples of how you can use it in different sentences and scenarios.

Can Little Language Lessons compete with Duolingo?

Little Language Lessons is a great idea and I’m looking forward to experimenting with it further. Will this affect Duolingo? I doubt it. But it offers a more relaxed and personalized approach to language learning, unlike Duolingo’s more structured lessons. I love that I can choose what I want to learn more about, especially since I think language acquisition is most effective when you learn words and phrases that you actively use on a daily basis.

The main problem is learning the wrong words, which can become a problem if the AI ​​decides to hallucinate the wrong translation. This is where human intervention can come in handy: if the lessons were created by humans and fact-checkers, you might feel a little more comfortable accepting the information at face value. However, as I study these lessons, I feel like I have to double-check everything he tells me.

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