Three parents -reni Cao, Xiao Zhang and Susan Rosenthal – were worried about their children’s screen time, so they left their technology work to create a product that encourages children to deal with the real world, helping them learn a new language. Their move has been rendering, as the company has recently brought $ 4.8 million funding.
The newly formed gadget is called Clockwise And it looks like a high -tech camera magnifying lens on one side and a touchscreen on the other. When children use the device to take pictures of objects, AI uses image identification technology to detect the object and translates the word into selected language. It also has interactive history lessons and games.
While there are language learning applications that focus on the child, such as Duolingo children, Dex argues that it needs a more attractive approach that emphasizes practical experiences, allowing children to sink into language.
“We are trying to teach authentic language in the real world in a way that is interactive,” Cao told TechCrunch. “Children not only listen to or do what they are told to do, but rather, they really think, create, interact, run around and simply be curious about things and gain the necessary language related to these concepts and objects.”
DEX is designed for children aged 3 to 8 and today supports Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish. It also offers support for 34 dialects, including Egyptian Arabic, Taiwan and Mexican Spain.
In addition to identifying objects, Dex has a library of interactive stories that encourage children to actively participate in the narrative. As the story unfolds, children are invited to respond, such as the greeting characters in the language they learn.
The device comes with a special application for parents to see a detailed overview of their child’s progress, including the words they have learned, the stories they have dealt with and the number of successive days they have used.
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In addition, Dex is currently developing a feature that allows children to ask AI Chatbot questions and participate in free -form talks. This feature is already available to some testers, but the company admits that it is not ready for a broader growth. Parents can also be careful for introducing AI Chatbots to their children.
During the test of Dex, we had concerns about the possibility of child learning inappropriate words. Our CAO assured us that “strict security prompts” are included every time the large linguistic model is used in vision, reasoning and text in speech.
He said: “We always have a security agent who assesses real -time conversations and filters conversations with a safe word list. The agent will suppress the discussion if any of the words are mentioned, including, maybe to those related to sexuality, religion, politics.
In addition, he said that AI is trained using vocabulary standards similar to those found in Britannica children and other children’s encyclopedias.
In our tests, AI successfully ignored naked issues. However, he recognized and translates precisely the term “weapon”, something that parents have to consider when buying the device.
Responding to our findings, Cao told us: “Set-Sophistic, I am not worried, but I think this is a concern, especially between [some] parents. “He added that these concerns have pushed the company to introduce a choice to the settings soon to filter specific words such as weapons, cigarettes, pens, fireworks, marijuana and bottles of beer.
DEX also has a zero data policy policy. While this means that there is no risk that sensitive or personal images will be stored, one disadvantage could be that parents remain in the dark for the type of content that their children can conceive.
DEX also works actively to obtain Coppa certification, which would make it compatible with the law of protecting children’s privacy.
The company secured funding from Clayvc, EmbeddingVC, Parable and Upscalex. Remarkable angels investors include founder Pinterest Ben Silbermann, co -founder Eduardo Vivas, Lillian Weng, who is former head of security at Openai and Richard Wong (former judge).
The device is available at $ 250, which feels sharp for a product designed for children. However, DEX is placed as a more affordable alternative to hiring a teacher who can charge up to $ 80 per hour or attend a language sinking school, which can cost several hundreds in thousands of dollars.
Dex says hundreds of families have already bought the device.
