Only theoretically; in practice, Duolingo have a specific brand — IMO aimed at helping younger kids with schoolwork — they don't want to risk damaging, so if you target your language course at people who chafe at the style of art, animation, voice, and/or content of Duolingo[0], you still have a business opportunity even though Duolingo is also already working with GPT-4.
[0] This is why I've stopped using Duolingo entirely, while also having paid versions of Clozemaster and Babbel, which are also very different from each other.
IMO duolingo is aimed at peopple(adults) who say they want to learn a language but aren't ready to take it seriously
In US/Japan etc. the largest age-group of learners is 13-22
- Found the source: https://blog.duolingo.com/dear-duolingo-how-does-language-le...
Any sort of LLM-based tutor is tricky with children as you can't guarantee that it won't come up with something inappropriate, even with the various guardrails in place. As a parent, I'm happy to take that risk especially if I am around to explain anything, but if I were a teacher for example then I probably wouldn't be and I imagine businesses are going to be in a similar situation.
Same.
For over a year before I finally gave up on it, I was force-quitting the app and reopening it for the next lesson because that was faster.
You know, like Yamaha with pianos, power amps, motorcycles, outboard motors ...
The thing here is that you have nothing that you can patent that Duo Lingo would have to buy from you, if you're just putting a skin on someone's AI.
Anywhere I can find out more or be notified?
We are seem a lot of these apps nowadays. People come up with a prompt, send to OpenAI with the user data, hide it behind a certain web interface and it's an app they can charge for.
I've thought about this a million times for scratching my own itches but I just talk to ChatGPT and it's fine.
But for GPT not correcting me, it's "a feature not a bug"©. Specifically, he's supposed to act like a Japanese person and if he can understand what I'm saying, even if the conjugation is wrong etc. it should work with it. However if I speak in complete giberish or english etc., then you have a "game over" where you fail the scenario.
It's supposed to be a "japan simulator" so to speak, and in real life, people make effort to understand you, you can use gestures also, even write stuff on paper if necessary.
However I'm currently adding a "validate your answer" button where he should tell you if it's grammatically correct etc. and allow you to take it back.
Ultimately, it's not going to be perfect, especially not with 3.5, but at my level of Japanese I think it's more about forcing me to be creative when I speak, in scenarios that matter to me. Not just following a script from Genki, but needing to explain stuff specific to my situation etc.
I thought of going the way you went with a product, but my takes are
- B2C is incredibly hard, especially with a subscription. People are just going to compare the price of your product to netflix and say it's not worth it
- What we do is fairly easy, the whole "value" is in some fairly simple prompt on top of openAI APIs. Even if it's a success, the likes of DuoLingo can copy that in a month and have so much more marketing and money to win the market
- Ultimately, people can have the same thing for free with ChatGPT and just a bit of copy and paste. As times goes on and other models become better / cheaper, it will be even harder to compete.
- I think open sourcing means that ultimately people can create their own scenarios etc. and maybe create a community around it.