I think this could be entertaining!
Anyone tried it out yet?
The past few days I’ve been experimenting using Microsoft’s Copilot AI bot to speak French with. Conversation is quite realistic.Last night we discussed - just for something to chat about - whether France will switch to a permanent time, rather than the twice yearly changeover. You can question it if there is something its said you don’t agree with (eg its opinions), and it will happily explain why it said it, quite like an individual. It’s accent sounds native (male). It very tactfully corrects you by echoing what you’ve said - but in a more linguistically correct way.
It is completely free. No account is needed. Microsoft have also recently removed any time limits on its usage, so there is no 10/15 minutes a day (free) time limitation. I’m quite impressed with it, though my wife whose frequently offered to speak French to me for practice purposes, feels a little put out that she’s been (only very partially!) been replaced by a bot..I just explain, truthfully, that a) I’m still a bit self conscious about my French and b) feel awkward speaking French to somebody I would normally speak English to 99.999% of the time.
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That is a very useful post. I have been drifting towards Copilot rather than ChatGPT because I can keep going, longer. I didn’t realise time restrictions had been, lifted. Just tried the chatbot (or whatever it is called,). Very impressive. Thanks for the heads up.
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Are we talking about spoken French here?
Yes, I have just been paying with it. The great thing is , you can ask “it” to speak slower until you are comfortable.
Edit: and you can ask it to correct you if you make a mistake.
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We have started doing better since we talk more to each other in French but then I suppose we are roughly at the same level and presumably you and your wife aren’t?
Interestingly that’s when it’s good to talk to each other - hard for George of course, but out there in the “real world” everyone will be speaking better French than he is. 
It’s like playing tennis with a better player - ups one’s own game.
Absolutely. Actual spoken conversations, as Mik has also confirmed. It automatically transcribes each conversation as well, so you can go back and familiarise yourself with words and phrases that you may not be familiar with.
Unfortunately yes. She’s lived and worked in Belgium much of her adult life, whereas I haven’t lived in Francophone countries for more than about 5/6 years. Although I’m quite happy to speak on the phone to businesses and organisations, in shops, garages etc, and chatter away when on the till at the clothes bank, I don’t have enough regular, lengthy conversations in French. Hence the attraction of a bot that won’t mind what time of day or for how long and about what subjects we ‘discuss’. I don’t unfortunately have the benefit of living near something as successful as your English/French conversations association either, to the best of my knowledge..And this is free (unless and until Microsoft decides to monetise it, which hopefully they won’t as there will be plenty of alternatives with other bots).
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We had to start it ourselves. It’s incredibly useful because of the very wide range of topics, but it’s a lot of work to organise…
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I was just demonstrating George’s suggestion to my wife.
I said, “it is just like speaking to a real person”
“No, it is much better” was the reply
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Two or three things have struck me, having now used the Copilot bot for a week or so of French conversations.
- You can discuss almost literally any subject under the sun with it, since Microsoft have presumably scraped data from across the globe to train the bot. It makes for limitless potential subjects to discuss, when practicing French etc. I tested it out by asking about Tibetan folk dancing (a subject on which I have zero knowledge!) which it was happy to discuss.
- You can regulate its speed of speech, if you sign in with a Microsoft account, to slow it down if you’re struggling.
- Its transcription of its own spoken words is perfect, but the transcripts of my comments are totally incomprehensible gibberish (and that’s not just due to my rather average French!!). I think its voice recognition software struggles to capture accurately what I’m saying (but this has no impact whatsoever on the quality of the actual oral exchanges).
I’ve started to use talkpal as recommended by someone on another thread. The main advantage is that Emma has endless patience so when I get stuck which is often I can go away and do a bit of research and carry on the conversation the next day!