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Hey, it’s Keith Hayden, the digital novelist, checking in with day six of my 30 day challenge where I’m learning Korean using only AI apps and tools.
This whole thing is part of a bigger experiment that I’ll be breaking down in my upcoming book The Tower of Babbling 2.0, which updates everything I learned from my first book about how to learn any language.
You don’t have to learn Korean to follow along. Whatever language you want to tackle, the ideas in this challenge will still apply.
Alright, here’s how day six went
I kind of drifted today. I wouldn’t call it a waste of time, but it definitely wasn’t the most productive session. I got curious about other AI language apps and decided to wander away from my usual setup.
If you’ve been following this challenge, you know I’ve mainly been using ChatGPT and especially Google Gemini because Gemini has been killing it for language recognition, pronunciation, and basically everything else you want when you’re studying from scratch.
Gemini is plugged into NotebookLM, which has become my study headquarters. They got my transcripts, notes, and flashcards all in one place. Today was day six in that notebook and the workflow is smooth.
But curiosity is a trap sometimes. Today I let it win.
Testing out JumpSpeak
I Googled “learn Korean with AI” and the top sponsored result was JumpSpeak. You may have seen their ads on Facebook. They advertise like crazy. So I gave it a shot.
First thing I check with any language app is the price. I already know these apps are basically fancy wrappers built on top of ChatGPT or Gemini. They’re not using their own AI models. They’re just packaging the same tools I already pay for in a different way.
That doesn’t make them bad. It just makes me cautious.
I ran through their onboarding flow and right away hit the first red flag. They offer a giant list of languages. Whenever I see that, I know they don’t specialize. The apps I’ve stuck with over the years always focused on getting one language right. These all-in-one tools usually feel shallow compared to that.
JumpSpeak asks about your goals, gives you a little assessment, then drops you into a paywall. They were running a Black Friday deal, but still. By the time I got to their pricing screen, I had already spent ten to fifteen minutes and hadn’t learned a single word of Korean.
That’s when it hit me. Why would I pay for another AI learning app when I already pay for Gemini and ChatGPT? If you already subscribe to those tools, there’s nothing JumpSpeak can do that you can’t recreate yourself.
But maybe you don’t want the blank screen of ChatGPT or the open sandbox feel of Gemini. Maybe you want something structured and simple. If that’s you, JumpSpeak might be great. For me, it’s just not worth it.
Back to Gemini
With the last ten minutes of my study time, I went right back to Google Gemini for my actual day six review. I kept it simple. A little speaking practice, a little reading, then I prepped a quiz for myself for tomorrow. Day seven is coming up which marks a full week of learning Korean. I want to do a mini self assessment and see how far I’ve come.
Honestly, even with the detour, it was still a good session. Gemini live voice continues to impress me and NotebookLM is proving to be one of the best study tools I’ve ever used.
Final thoughts
Short recap today, but here’s the main takeaway. There are tons of AI language learning apps popping up right now. Not all of them are scams, but most of them are selling a pretty interface for the exact same thing you can do with ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude. Before you subscribe to anything, ask yourself one question:
What can this app do that I can’t already do with the AI tools I’m paying for?
If the answer is “not much,” you’ve got your answer.
Alright, that’s it for day six. See you tomorrow for the one week recap.
Bye.