Are Artificial Intelligence 'Chat Robots' the Next Teachers?

A Japanese company has invented the world's first artificial intelligence "chatbots" designed to converse with English language students.

An education company called SpeakGlobal recently presented its chat robots, which use high-speed speech recognition technology that enables them to have real-time spoken conversations.

The chatbots can be accessed online, where students can participate in the virtual world that the robots inhabit.

"SpeakGlobal has developed online robots that look and move like a human, speak aloud and with text-to-speech, its dialogue lines appear on the user's computer screen," the company said in a statement.

Students can speak into a microphone using Dragon Naturally Speaking, high-end speech recognition technology.

The idea behind the technology was driven by the high cost of one-to-one language classes in Japan, SpeakGlobal revealed.