Connecting educational technology with the omnipresent emergence of AI, I wanted to explore software that could benefit language teachers with the creation of resources. Many teachers have been worried and worse, terrified by what AI is doing and will do to education, but I, along with some language teacher peers, am trying my best to embrace it. What teachers are complaining about now, for example, students using AI to write entire papers, or to create dialogues, scripts etc… has ALWAYS been a problem for teachers of additional languages. All of our colleagues are finally feeling what we have always felt. Anything we assign that is done outside of class, is immediately invalid since students will use translation tools. Language teachers must create assessment tasks that are monitored and completed solely in class.
One of the ways I have been using AI is to use it for the creation of audio and video listening resources. These can be activities in class, unit tests or final exams. Listening is a very challenging skill for most learners, so continued practise is essential. Many textbooks and school programs fall very short in terms of what they offer in their programs, so…
In comes… Fliki.AI…. a software where you can create audio and video clips with many different functions such as: rate or pitch change of voices, a choice of many voices in 75+ languages, male and female, as well as regional accents. There is also a voice cloning option through the premium subscription.
Please have a look at my Analyst Report: https://sites.google.com/view/analystreportflikiai/home
I love the use of this for the purpose of language training, as per the French example. There are currently a large number of companies that do text to speech, even with AI avatars. Is Fliki unique in its foreign language fluency?
Late response – sorry Doug!
You are right… there are many other examples and on Fliki’s webpage: https://fliki.ai/comparisons/fliki-vs-play-ht-vs-lovo-vs-listnr they offer a comparison chart to PlayHT, Lovo and Listnr. What Fliki claims is that they have 77+ languages (whereas the other three have 75+, 33 and 75) and that the have 850+ voices. I am assuming the + is due to that fact that they are continuing to add languages and regional accents.
Anecdotally, I would say that I really love the fact that I can create audio with a Quebec, Belgian or Swiss accent as opposed to the omnipresent French accent that is featured in most textbooks and resources.
I must admit that I haven’t explored the other competitors very thoroughly.