If we are to believe Tutor Lily’s product pitch, this AI-driven chatbot is nothing less than a language tutor that you can pull out of your pocket at any time to learn your target language. I checked out the app and here are my findings.
As in so many areas, the rise of generative AI is changing language learning tech fastly. That’s why I’m keeping a close eye on apps like Talkpal, Teacher AI, and others. Tutor Lily is another app that fits into this category of AI-powered language learning apps. I tested both the Android-app and the browser-version on my laptop.
In a nutshell, here’s what Tutor Lily has to offer:
- Real-time conversation practice: Tutor Lily helps you practice speaking and understanding your chosen language effectively.
- Instant feedback and explanations: You receive immediate corrections and detailed explanations for mistakes, promoting a deeper understanding of the language.
- 24/7 Accessibility: Learn anytime, anywhere, as the app is always ready to assist, provided you’re connected to the internet.
- Support for multiple languages: Tutor Lily supports over 40 languages. By switching the settings you can learn several languages, not just one.
Good to know: Tutor Lily is available on both Android and iOS platforms. The app offers a free Starter Plan with limited features, allowing users to explore its capabilities before opting for a premium subscription that unlocks additional functionalities.
My experience with Tutor Lily
First of all, I am pleasantly surprised by the audio quality. The Chinese version of Lily not only has a pleasant voice, but the intonation, sentence melody, and rhythm also seem to be quite accurate. In this regard, the app (so far) clearly has an edge over the competitor Talkpal. Because even though you’re chatting with an AI-bot, you still want the AI-voice to sound as human and natural as possible.
Read more: What’s the best AI-voice generator for Chinese?
What stands out to me about Lily’s ‘personality’ is that she seems more developed than many other chatbots. It definitely feels a bit more personal and ‘human-like’. For example, Lily can spontaneously mention what kind of movies she likes and she also responded very empathically to me stating that I have a cold.
Another nice thing is that Lily doesn’t correct every tiny mistake. This way, you can leave out a period or comma without worry and answer with just a few words. Competitor Talkpal penalizes you for this, although your output is perfectly fine, which is somewhat annoying.
My main reason for using the app is chatting about day to day stuff and other topics of personal interest. For example, the visit of YouTube star iShowSpeed to China or tariffs and the current trade war. By giving (in my case) sloppy Chinese input on such topics you discover better ways of phrasing things, gradually gain more fluency and also improve your writing skills.
Another thing that’s great about AI-powered tutors like Lily is that they don’t grow tired of your questions and they’re always informed about almost everything. You can ask for books and movie recommendations or discuss the latest Nezha film (哪吒).
Likes
- 24/7 availability with real-time feedback
- Cost-efficient option compared to real tutors
- Audio sounds quite natural!
- Pleasant chatting ‘personality’
- Not overly rigorous in correcting mistakes
Dislikes
- Variety of exercises is rather limited
- Different characters lack depth. Male character Don Corleone sound a lot like Lily.
- Difficult to track your progress learning new vocabulary
- Limited free usage, requires internet connection, no offline access
Interesting app for beginners?
The app allows you to pick your proficiency level (beginner, intermediate, advanced) and supposedly Tutor Lily adjusts to that. But naturally, Tutor Lily can’t read all the signs your human tutor would, so don’t expect Lily to slow down and make sure you understand everything. So yes, you can surely fool around with this app when you’re still relatively new to Chinese, however to practice in a more meaningful and rewarding way, I do think an intermediate level (starting from HSK 4) is required.
Pricing
Tutor Lily offers a free and a paid plan. With the free plan you can send only 10 messages and request two mistake corrections per day. Enough to check out the basic features, but insufficient for serious practice.
If you’re willing to invest some money to get the full deal, you can choose between a weekly, monthly and yearly plan. The current price for one year is $83.99, slightly cheaper compared to Talkpal (which has more features though). This is what signing up for Lily Pro gets you:
✅ Ad-free Experience ✅ Unlimited Messages
✅ Unlimited Suggestions
✅ Unlimited Mistake Explanations
✅ Unlimited Hands-Free Mode
✅ Access to all 40+ Languages
✅ Access to all Premium Features
Can Tutor Lily beat a real tutor?
Compared to the average hourly rate of a Chinese tutor, Lily is certainly not a bad deal. Although the question remains if that it is a fair comparison. So can Tutor Lily outperform a human tutor?
I personally don’t think so. Similar to other AI-chatbots Tutor Lily can only simulate human interaction to help you produce output in a stress-free way, it can correct mistakes and help you improve your sentences, but it can’t perform other typical tutor tasks like assessing your language level and other specific learning needs in order to help your reach your language goals.
The biggest advantage – to be fair here – are its instant availability and low costs. In this regard, Tutor Lily may well beat her human competitors.
Find out more: Can ChatGPT be your Chinese language tutor?
Talkpal vs Lily
Choosing between Talkpal and Tutor Lily is not that straightforward. In fact, they offer largely the same features at more or less the same price. Talkpal takes the lead in download statistics though and is more extensive in terms of learning options. With the ‘debates’ feature for example, you can discuss various topics. The number of roleplays is also very extensive. The same goes for the ‘characters,’ the largely historical personalities you can chat with. You can also have your pronunciation evaluated by AI, repeating ready-made sentences (per topic). In that sense, Talkpal definitely has more to offer.
The question, of course, is whether you really need all of that. Maybe you find the basic chat function more than enough. Personally, I think Tutor Lily is better in two ways: Lily’s standard chatbot is more pleasant to chat with (this could be my imagination), and the audio is really quite good, although Talkpal has also recently improved this for several languages, including Chinese. However, I still think Tutor Lily’s Chinese audio is a fraction better.
ChatGPT vs Lily
Tutor Lily doesn’t conceal the fact that the app runs on ChatGPT, so why not just use ChatGPT to learn Chinese, which is also free?
Using ChatGPT to enhance your Chinese skills is definitely an option. The downside of ChatGPT is that it is not optimized to act as your Chinese tutor. Even open-source GPTs like “Language Teacher / Ms. Smith” still have a lot of room for improvement. However, it is certainly possible, if you’re patient, to get ChatGPT to dance to your tune with the right prompts.
Tutor Lily offers more convenience for a relatively low fee though. It’s not perfect yet, but once you’ve set up the app, the AI tutor is basically ready to chat with you, role-play, or discuss any topic you want. Also – it must be said – the Chinese audio is much better than the American-accented Chinese voices of ChatGPT.
Conclusion
Long story short: Tutor Lily is especially interesting for intermediate or advanced learners who want to expand their vocabulary and improve their writing skills through free-flowing chat conversations. You can talk about almost any topic and simulate a wide range of situations to help you in real-life communication.
I’m hopeful that the competition between the various AI tutor apps on the market will lead to further improvements. Why not – for instance – have multiple tutors with different personalities to chat with, who have different backgrounds and respond in different ways? I’d like to have an AI-tutor who really support my personal language learning goals, whether it’s preparing for HSK or for my next trip to China. Also, it would be cool to be able to review vocabulary covered in previous conversations with a special dashboard or do a reviewing session with your tutor.
I hope these things and more will be possible in the future.
Affiliate links
Disclosure: These are affiliate links. They help me to support this blog, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase.
