Speaking AI Chinese Tutor

Welcome to the forum! I'd be curious to give it a try. I used to practice speaking Chinese and some other languages with ChatGPT but it feels a bit like the current self driving cars: technologically almost there but still too robotic and annoying to use regularly. Like if I'm sober and talking to a drunk person: it can be entertaining for a while and they might say something interesting, but something feels off and I'd rather keep it brief.

For example I found it hard to make it discard the "assistant mode" and instead hold a balanced conversation like you would have with a human, where both sides give insights, ask questions, change topics and sometimes randomly switch back to previous topics. It seems ChatGPT just wants to answer my question and then asks "is there more I can help you with?". It gets tedious to keep asking questions and then listen to the mansplaining machine yapping. I guess this is what the model is trained to do so it's hard to override it with just a couple of prompts. Admittedly I never bothered to put much effort into polishing my prompts, I'd much rather wait for someone like you to come up with a product that just works haha.

I tested "talk with xiaoqiu", and it works really well, great job! The AI sounds pleasant and recognizes my extremely broken Mandarin well. I really like having the push-to-talk button because I speak slowly. Choosing the skill level and a topic helps to get right into the conversation.

The offered topics are a bit generic and "small talky" though, which are fine for HSK1-3 but at HSK4-5 I would like to talk about something chewier. It would be cool if it offered random topics from the HSK tests that I could then debate or role play with the AI. For example, the first question in some HSK5 sample test talks about a study that found out how thanking people improves their mental health (I guess JD Vance was onto something here!). So the AI could say something like this and ask what I think, and then give its own insights or maybe politely argue against what I said.