In today’s fast-paced world, AI-driven tools are transforming how we learn, work, and manage our daily lives. This project aims to build a versatile AI assistant, starting with an English-speaking tutor. This assistant will offer real-time, conversational learning experiences, with the potential to grow into a multifunctional tool that supports a wide range of tasks. In this post, I’ll walk you through the early stages of the development process, including the app’s goals, requirements, and a basic prototype.
Goals
Short-term Goals
- Create an AI English-speaking tutor accessible from any device with internet connectivity.
- Offer users real-time conversational practice in English, simulating human interaction.
- Store conversations in an organized, permanent manner for review and learning reinforcement.
Long-term Goals
- Expand the app into a multifunctional personal assistant that helps with tasks such as proofreading, scheduling, image generation, and web scraping.
- Automate parts of users’ daily routines to help them focus on high-priority tasks.
Requirements
- A database to store conversations.
- An intuitive UI that is easy and fun to interact with.
- Functionality to capture speech, transcribe it, and have the AI speak responses.
- Voice control to enhance usability.
- Integration with multiple AI APIs and custom tools to manage various tasks.
- User authentication for personalised experiences.
Design: Back-of-the-Napkin Sketches
A Quick Prototype
To test some of the key features, I built an initial prototype. It includes core functionality like recording and transcribing speech, sending transcripts to the OpenAI API for processing, and playing back AI responses. The prototype demonstrates the basic conversational flow between the user and the AI tutor, simulating an interactive learning session.
Next Step
In the next part of this series, I will integrate a database to enable users to perform CRUD operations on conversations, laying the groundwork for a more robust and feature-rich app.