Three dad and mom — Reni Cao, Xiao Zhang, and Susan Rosenthal — had been apprehensive about their kids’s display time, so that they left their tech jobs to create a product that encourages kids to have interaction with the actual world whereas additionally serving to them study a brand new language. Their transfer has paid off, as the corporate not too long ago raised $4.8 million in funding.
The newly launched gadget known as Dex and resembles a high-tech magnifying glass with a digital camera lens on one aspect and a touchscreen on the opposite. When youngsters use the machine to take footage of objects, the AI makes use of picture recognition expertise to establish the article and translate the phrase into the chosen language. It additionally options interactive story classes and video games.
Whereas kid-focused language studying apps like Duolingo Youngsters exist, Dex argues that it takes a extra participating strategy that emphasizes hands-on experiences, permitting kids to immerse themselves within the language.
“We’re attempting to show genuine language in the actual world in a method that’s interactive,” Cao informed iinfoai. “The children will not be solely listening or doing what they’re informed to do, however moderately, they’re really considering, creating, interacting, operating round, and simply being inquisitive about issues, and purchase the mandatory language related to these ideas and objects.”
Dex is designed for youths ages 3 to eight years outdated and at present helps Chinese language, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. It additionally affords help for 34 dialects, together with Egyptian Arabic, Taiwanese Mandarin, and Mexican Spanish.
Along with object recognition, Dex includes a library of interactive tales that encourage kids to actively take part within the narrative. Because the story unfolds, youngsters are prompted to reply, resembling greeting characters within the language they’re studying.
The machine comes with a devoted app for folks to see an in depth overview of their little one’s progress, together with the vocabulary phrases they’ve discovered, the tales they’ve engaged with, and the variety of consecutive days they’ve used Dex.
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Moreover, Dex is at present creating a characteristic that enables youngsters to ask an AI chatbot questions and have interaction in free-form conversations. This characteristic is already out there to some testers, however the firm admits it isn’t prepared for a wider rollout. Mother and father may also be cautious about introducing AI chatbots to their kids.
Throughout our testing of Dex, we had considerations about the potential of a toddler studying inappropriate phrases. Cao assured us that “inflexible security prompts” are included every time the massive language mannequin is used throughout imaginative and prescient, reasoning, and text-to-speech.
He stated, “We now have an always-on security agent that evaluates conversations in actual time and filters conversations with a secure cease thesaurus. The agent will suppress dialog if any of the cease phrases are talked about, together with however not restricted to these associated to sexuality, faith, politics, and so forth. Mother and father will quickly have the ability to additional add to customized stop-word lists.”
Plus, it stated that the AI is educated utilizing vocabulary requirements just like these present in Britannica Youngsters and different kids’s encyclopedias.
In our testing, the AI efficiently ignored matters associated to nudity. Nonetheless, it did acknowledge and precisely translate the time period “gun,” one thing dad and mom ought to think about when buying the machine.
In response to our findings, Cao informed us, “Regulation-wise, I’m not apprehensive, however I do assume this presents a priority, particularly amongst [some] dad and mom.” He added that these considerations have pushed the corporate to quickly introduce an possibility in settings to filter out particular phrases, resembling weapons, cigarettes, vape pens, fireworks, marijuana, and beer bottles.
Dex additionally has a zero knowledge retention coverage. Whereas this implies there’s no threat of delicate or private pictures being saved, one draw back could possibly be that oldsters are left in the dead of night about the kind of content material their youngsters could also be capturing.
Dex can be actively working towards acquiring COPPA Secure Harbor standing, which might make it compliant with the Kids’s On-line Privateness Safety Act.
The funding spherical was led by Parable, with participation from Eduardo Vivas (Curated co-founder), UpscaleX, ClayVC, and EmbeddingVC. Notable angel traders embrace Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann, Lilian Weng, who’s the previous head of security at OpenAI, and Richard Wong (ex-Coursera).
The machine is priced at $250, which feels steep for a product designed for youngsters. Nonetheless, Dex positions itself as a extra reasonably priced various to hiring a tutor, which might cost as much as $80 per hour, or attending a language immersion college, which might value a number of hundred to even 1000’s of {dollars}.
Dex says that lots of of households have already bought the machine.
This story was up to date after publication.
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