Technologies

Knight Takes Pawn. Chess Lessons Are Coming to Duolingo

The course is in beta now, but will be available to everyone in a few months.

«Hola, ajedrez,» means «Hello, chess» in Spanish. You’ve always been able to learn Spanish on Duolingo, and soon you’ll be able to learn and practice chess on the language learning app, too. Duolingo announced on Tuesday that beta testers can practice the centuries-old board game in Duolingo now, and others will be able to learn the game on the app in a few months.

Duolingo’s chess lessons aim to be beginner-friendly

I spoke with a Duolingo rep about the upcoming lessons. They said they wanted to continue expanding what people can learn through the app, and chess was an early contender.

«[Chess is] one of those things that … any age group can learn … but then also something that takes the 10,000-hour theory to really master,» Edwin Bodge, a senior product manager with Duolingo, said. «We thought it would fit with the Duolingo medium really well.»

When I asked why people would use Duolingo over other chess learning sites and tools, Bodge said a lot of other chess content is geared toward advanced users, not newcomers.

«We really saw a great opportunity to try and cater to more of a beginner, medium [player] and try and increase access to the game,» he said.

The chess lessons are slightly different from others you might find on Duolingo, like Spanish and math, but the progression system is similar. And from what Duolingo showed me, the lessons really do start at square one — or at a1 on a chessboard.

Chess lessons should feel similar to other Duolingo lessons

When you start, Duolingo asks how much you already know about chess — like in other lessons on the app. Duolingo will then adjust the lessons according to your response.

If you say you’re brand-new to chess and have no knowledge of the game, early lessons will focus on how each piece moves before moving on to capturing other pieces and checking the king. Other lessons are similar to mini-puzzles where you might be asked to capture different pieces using a single piece, like your knight or rook, in four moves or fewer.

You can access hints for each lesson, but if you get something wrong, your opponent will react to show you you’ve left a piece open for capture, like in a real match. And if you keep getting something incorrect, Duolingo will show you what to do.

«If you get it wrong multiple times, eventually we’ll show you an arrow that shows you exactly where to move,» Sammi Siegel, a software engineer with Duolingo, said.

If you are subscribed to Duolingo Max and make a mistake in a language lesson, the app can explain the mistake — and what the right solution is — with a feature called Explain My Answer. However, that feature won’t be available with the chess lessons for now. It’s not always easy to explain why something is right or wrong in chess because there are so many millions of different moves.

«We want to get better at fuller explanations,» Siegel said. «There is some mix of AI and model training that we’re hoping to use to better explain why a certain move is wrong.»

Because there are so many moves in chess, it’s possible to make moves that could be correct but aren’t the best options. In such instances, Duolingo will show a banner that lets you know that a move isn’t wrong but isn’t necessarily the best move.

Duolingo also said each section represents a range on the Elo rating system — the method by which a chess player’s skills are calculated. As you progress, your lessons will be tougher and more challenging. This is similar to the CEFR language proficiency levels attached to the different language sections in the app.

You’ll also have the opportunity to have «mini-matches» or full-on games against Duolingo’s chess coach, Oscar. These matches will scale in difficulty to challenge you as well, so you aren’t facing a grandmaster-level chess player after your first week of playing the game. But that doesn’t mean you can slack off and play sloppily. If you make a mistake, like leaving your queen open to capture, Oscar will take advantage and leave you scrambling to recover.

While playing against Oscar is good practice, you won’t be able to face off against other players when these chess lessons launch. But Duolingo said matches against other people are something they are looking into, so you might be able to play against a friend over the app in the future.

«One of the big reasons why we’re doing this is we think we can get a whole generation of people interested in chess,» Bodge said.

Duolingo’s chess lessons are in beta now and will begin rolling out on iOS in English around mid-May. Duolingo said it is working to bring these lessons to Android devices and more languages in the coming months.

For more on Duolingo, here’s how well the free version prepared me for a trip to Italy and our review of the language learning app. You can also check out our best language learning apps.

Technologies

Honor’s Magic V5 Boasts On-Device Live AI Call Translation for Guaranteed Privacy

In an exclusive interview with CNET, Honor’s President of Product Fei Fang reveals how the V5’s AI model will allow for more speed, accuracy and privacy.

«Hola! ¿Hablas inglés?» I asked the woman who answered the phone in the Barcelona restaurant.

I was calling in a futile attempt to make a reservation for the CNET team dinner during Mobile World Congress this year. Unfortunately, I don’t know Spanish (I learned French and German at school). And as it turned out, she didn’t speak English either.

«No!» she said, and brusquely hung up.

What I needed in that moment was the kind of AI call translation feature that’s becoming increasingly prevalent on phones — including those made by Samsung and Google, and, starting next week, Honor.

When Honor unveils its Magic V5 foldable at a launch event on Aug. 28 in London, it will come with what the company is calling «the industry’s first on-device large speech model,» which will allow live AI call translation to take place on device, with no cloud processing.

Currently the phone supports six languages — English, Chinese, French, German, Italian and Spanish. For aforementioned reasons, I can’t test all of these, but I’ve already had a play around with the feature and can confirm it did a very effective job of translating my garbled messages into French. I only wish I’d had it available to me in Spain when I needed it.

The model Honor has deployed was designed by the company in collaboration with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, based on the open-source Whisper model, said Fei Fang, president of product at Honor in an interview. It’s been optimized for streaming speech recognition, automatic language detection and translation inference acceleration (that’s speed and efficiency, to you and I).

According to Fang, Honor’s user experience studies have shown that as long as translation occurs within 1.5 seconds, it doesn’t «induce waiting anxiety,» in anyone attempting to use AI call translation. As such, it’s made sure to keep the latency to within these parameters so you won’t get anxious waiting for the translation to kick in.

«We also work together with industry language experts to consistently and comprehensively evaluate the accuracy of our output,» she added. «The assessment is primarily based on five metrics: accuracy, logical coherence, readability, grammatical correctness and conciseness.»

In addition to Honor’s AI model, live translation is being powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite chip. The 8 Elite’s NPU allows multimodal generative AI applications to be integrated onto the device. Honor’s algorithms work together with the NPU to keep power consumption as low as possible while maintaining the required accuracy of the translations, said Christopher Patrick, SVP of mobile handsets at Qualcomm.

There are a number of benefits to having the AI model embedded on the Magic V5, but perhaps the most compelling is the privacy it guarantees. It means that everything is processed locally and your calls will therefore remain completely confidential. The fact that the model lives on device and you don’t need to download voice packages also reduces its storage needs.

Another benefit of running the model on the phone itself is «offline usability,» said Patrick. «All conversation information is stored directly on-device and users can access it anytime, anywhere, without network restrictions.»

The work Honor has done on AI call translation is set to be recognized at the upcoming Interspeech conference on speech science and tech. But already, Honor is thinking about how this use of AI can be used to enable other new and exciting features for the people who buy its phones.

«Beyond the essential user scenario of call translation, Honor’s on-device large speech model will also be deployed in scenarios such as face-to-face translation [and] AI subtitles,» said Fang. The process of developing the speech model has allowed Honor’s AI team to gain extensive experience of model optimization, which it will use to develop other AI applications, she added.

«Looking ahead, we will continue to expand capabilities in areas such as emotion recognition and health monitoring, further empowering voice interactions with your on-device AI assistant,» she said.

Technologies

Honor’s Shimmering Magic V Flip 2 Has Arrived to Outshine Samsung’s Galaxy Flip

The flip foldable, releasing in China, includes a limited edition model co-designed by Jimmy Choo.

Honor has unveiled a new flip phone in China, and the company is billing it as, «the ultimate selfie device.» The Magic V Flip 2 includes an ultra-wide portrait mode, AI photography features and a playful, sparkly design.

The Magic V Flip 2 adds another device to Honor’s increasing lineup of foldable phones. So far, it’s only releasing the Magic V Flip 2 in China, starting on Aug. 28. It will sell for RMB 5,499 or about $766 USD.

The Magic V Flip2 appears to be geared toward influencers and fashionistas — a limited edition version of the new phone is co-designed by fashion icon Jimmy Choo and is, «inspired by the subtle shimmer of crystals.» It comes in deep sea blue and has a crushed stardust design, according to Honor’s press release.

Honor is also touting the phone’s 5,500mAh battery, which it says is the largest on the market for a flip phone. The also phone features a 200-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera and a 50 MP selfie camera. The Magic V Flip 2’s closest competition may be Samsung’s Galaxy Flip 7 FE, which is about $200 more expensive than the Magic V Flip 2.

Technologies

Silksong, Long-Awaited Hollow Knight Spinoff, Gets Release Date: Sept. 4

Announced in 2019, Team Cherry’s follow-up is coming sooner than expected, and it’s on Game Pass on Day 1.

Hollow Knight: Silksong is the follow-up, announced back in 2019, to one of the most beloved indie games of the last decade. In a special announcement video on Thursday, Australian developer Team Cherry revealed that the wait is almost over.

Silksong will be released on Sept. 4, according to the new trailer. The almost two-minute video reveals some of the new enemies and bosses in the upcoming spinoff and ends with the surprise release date.

Originally, Silksong was going to be a DLC for Hollow Knight. However, numerous delays resulted in it being pushed back again and again. Glimpses of the game would show up here and there over the years, but it was this year that it received the most attention from Nintendo as part of its Switch 2 lineup, and from Microsoft, which confirmed it would be available on Xbox Game Pass.

Hollow Knight: Silksong will be available on PC, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, PS4 and PS5. It will be available on Day 1 for Xbox Game Pass subscribers.