I built an AI conversation partner to practice speaking languages
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Hi,I built TalkBits because most language apps focus on vocabulary or exercises, but not actual conversation. The hard part of learning a language is speaking naturally under pressure.TalkBits lets you have real-time spoken conversations with an AI that acts like a native speaker. You can choose different scenarios (travel, daily life, work, etc.), speak naturally, and the AI responds with natural speech back.The goal is to make it feel like talking to a real person rather than doing lessons.Techwise, it uses realtime speech input, transcription, LLM responses, and tts streaming to keep latency low so the conversation feels fluid.I’m specially interested in feedback about: – Does it feel natural? – Where does the conversation break immersion? – What would make you use this regularly?Happy to answer technical questions too.Thanks
HN · launched Jan 30, 2026 · 65 upvotes (top 16%) · 0 views
Niche: language learning apps · 511 launches, 50 in the last 7 days ▼ -6% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Education
- Agent / copilot
- B2C
- AI-native
- Commercial product
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 511 launches in language learning apps →
Could you build this?
Yes This is an iOS speech partner app chaining standard mobile audio recording to Whisper STT, an LLM API (like OpenAI/Anthropic), and TTS synthesis.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: ChatGPT/OpenAI, Gemini, Other conversational AI language learning apps
Concerns raised: Microphone picks up AI speech causing feedback loop without headphones, Language mixing and formal/informal inconsistency in some language variants, Speech sounds mechanical/robotic compared to competitor models, Model repetition and limited conversational variety, Market saturation - similar apps already exist
Feature requests: Android version, Japanese language support, Portuguese (PT-PT) improvement with better accent/tone, Better handling of formal/informal language registers
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 1158 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #199 of 1159 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 92 days after the earliest competitor.
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- Sidestream · hn · 2026-01-06 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.56
- AiSpeak · ph · 2026-11-12 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.56
- FaceTime-style calls with an AI Companion (Live2D and long-term memory) · hn · 2026-01-25 · 34 upvotes · similarity 0.56
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