Learn languages by texting AI friends: how Pollyfriends works

Pollyfriends is a messaging app for living a language. You text, send voice notes and call friends who live where that language is spoken, and those friends are AI characters: each one has a name, an age, a city, a job, a family, a daily routine and a story. There are 57 languages and characters from 75 countries.

This article explains, plainly, how it works, who the friends are and what you can do with them.

The idea in one sentence

People who move abroad pick up the language by chatting with the neighbor, the coworker and the barista on the corner. Pollyfriends tries to bring that circle of people to your phone. The idea is to live a language, not just memorize it.

Who the friends are

Each language has its own group of friends, with the cities and the way of speaking of that country. The English cast, for example, is 57 characters living in Austin, New York, Chicago, San Antonio and Los Angeles. A few of them:

• Maya, 24, lead barista on the morning shift at a neighborhood café in Austin. She makes coffee puns and practices latte art on her breaks.
• Dot, 74, a retired second-grade teacher who has lived in the same house since 1979 and knows the name of every dog on the block.
• Travis, 52, an electrician and host of the Saturday barbecue, who lights the smoker at 5 a.m.
• Matt, 45, a subtitle editor in New York who writes short, dry messages with no exclamation points.
• Ben, 40, a private English tutor. He's the only one in the group who speaks your language, and he explains corrections and grammar when you ask.

The Spanish cast lives in Mexico: Vale, a barista in Mexico City's Narvarte neighborhood; Doña Martha, who has sold tamales on the same corner for 19 years; Diego, a phone store clerk who texts in bursts of wey and qué onda; and Renata, the group's private tutor, among many others.

Are the friends real people?

No. They're AI characters. Each one was created with a story, a family, a routine and a way of talking, and stays in character during the conversation, but there's no real person typing on the other side. The site footer says so on every page.

How the conversation works

1. You pick a language. The friends from that place become part of your day.
2. It works like a messaging app: text, voice notes both ways, photos and calls, about their lives and yours.
3. Each friend has their own routine. They work, sleep, go out with family and have good and bad days. The barista talks about the morning shift; the electrician talks about Saturday's barbecue.
4. New words come up inside the conversation. One tap shows the translation and an example.
5. Conversations draw on the most used words of the language, like the ones in the 100 most common Spanish words, and on the words you already know, like the Spanish words you already know.

What a conversation looks like

Here's a possible start, with Maya. Her first message is the same thing she'd say at the counter: Hi! What can I get started for you? You can answer like a customer (A medium latte, please!), make small talk (How's your morning?) or just say hi. If a word is new, one tap shows the translation and an example. If the question is bigger, about grammar or "how would a native say this", Ben explains it.

Over time, the conversation fills up with each friend's life: Travis's Saturday barbecue, Dot's garden, the Mondays Matt hates.

Mentors from the past

Besides today's friends, each group has historical mentors. The English cast includes, for example, Mark Twain, Harriet Tubman and the astronomer Maria Mitchell. They live in their own time, so conversations with the mentors happen by letter, at each mentor's pace.

Where it works

Pollyfriends opens in your phone's browser and can be added to the home screen like an app. It also works on a computer.

Voice notes, calls, photos and status updates

The conversation isn't limited to text:

• Voice notes both ways. The friends send voice notes, each with their own voice and way of talking, and you can reply by speaking.
• "How it sounded". In English, one tap on "how it sounded" under your voice note shows a simple score from 1 to 5, the words that came out differently and how each one should sound. It's optional: nobody corrects you unless you ask.
• Voice and video calls. You can call the friends, and they call you too, at times you agree on. Live captions are optional and, just like in messages, tapping a word shows what it means.
• Photos and status updates. The friends post status updates that follow their routine and the real day in their country, and send photos of what they're up to: breakfast, their street, Saturday's barbecue.
• Letters from the mentors. With the mentors from the past, the conversation happens by letter, slowly, at their pace.

What it doesn't promise

Pollyfriends doesn't promise you'll speak a language in so many days or weeks. Everyone has their own pace, routine and starting point. What the app offers is company in the language: people (AI people) to talk with every day, about real things.

Quick questions

How many languages are there? 57, including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic and Russian.

Do I need to know anything first? No. Conversations start with the most used words and the ones that look like your own language, and each group's bilingual tutor helps when you get stuck.

Can I talk to more than one friend? Yes. Each has their own topics, schedule and way of speaking, and that's what keeps conversations varied.

Will the friends speak my language? They speak their own. The exception is each group's bilingual tutor, like Ben in English or Renata in Spanish, who switches to your language to explain whatever got confusing.

Meet the friends

Every friend has a page with their age, city, story, the phrases they always use and the first message they send. If you're curious, start with the English-speaking friends or the Spanish-speaking friends and see who you'd have things to talk about with.