Xiaoyin Qu is not your typical AI startup founder. The super-energetic entrepreneur recently unveiled a new learning app for kids called Heeyo AI.
Dropping out of Stanford Graduate School of Business to start her entrepreneurial venture and eventually in the learning and teaching space, stands testament to her unwavering commitment to revolutionise education with AI.
During her late-night discussion with AIM, Qu enthusiastically explained the app, revealing that its vision stemmed from her own childhood desire for a coach who could guide her inventive and curious mind.
“When you are 3 years old, you are just learning to talk. When you are 6 to 7, you can say multiple sentences. When you are 8 or 9, is when you can handle a lot of very open-ended creation. So, that’s why AI actually needs to change the way they talk to you based on your cognitive abilities, and we have both systems that can cater to that,” said Qu, founder and CEO of Heeyo AI, in an exclusive interaction with AIM.
Defining themselves as ‘smart AI friends that help kids learn,’ California-based Heeyo AI received a $3.5M seed fund from some of the biggest tech players in the market including OpenAI startup fund, Amazon Alexa Fund, Par VC, Charge Ventures, StoryHouse Ventures and other top VCs. The startup is also funded by teams from top universities including Stanford and Harvard.
Heeyo utilises various AI models, including text-to-speech, speech recognition, text-to-image, and text-to-music. They use specific models like OpenAI and Stable Diffusion for tasks such as content creation, translation, and image generation, with each project involving multiple models in a step-by-step process.
The learning platform provides over 2000+ learning games where the AI figure can speak in over 20 languages through fun avatars such as pandas and dragons.
Social Emotional Learning
Heeyo is leveraging its AI platform, which is ideal for 3 to 11 year-olds, to address one of the biggest challenges of social emotional learning in children which is essentially helping kids improve their social skills.
Qu highlighted the importance of teaching children how to make friends, express themselves, handle rejection, and respond appropriately when meeting someone new, and believes Heeyo will address all that.
“That’s a relatively new thing that all Silicon Valley parents want to be interested in,” said Qu.
Furthermore, Heeyo allows anyone including parents, educators, and kids to design their own learning games, and make them based on different cultures. “When you want to do a trivia on some Hindu traditions or Chinese traditions, you can actually build it up. In the US, we see some people are doing, like, Bible stuff. It’s like Bible parenting,” said Qu.
Previous to this, Qu started Run The World, a leading virtual event platform, which she eventually sold last year. She has also led product management at Facebook and Instagram and led marketing & business development for Atlassian’s Asian market.
AI for the Physical World
Qu is also ecstatic with the kind of funding Heeyo has received, and considers to be very lucky to have OpenAI invested in it. Not just OpenAI, but being backed by Amazon Alexa too, the potential for future products is plenty.
Qu highlighted how with many children already using Alexa, she believes that their content and interactive experiences could integrate well with Alexa to help even more kids.
“In the long run, we plan to partner with toy companies, like family animals, and some of that. So, that’s going to happen. But, right now, we’re starting more from a content standpoint to make sure we have the right content,” said Qu.
Interestingly, children’s friendly AI robot Moxie, was also built with the intention of helping children develop social skills. Talking about it, Qu mentioned that Moxie is built for kids with special needs such as autism and has seen many adopt them. However, the price range of it makes it inaccessible for all.
“We could imagine that Moxie costs $899 and that’s pretty much not affordable for most families,” said Qu, who also said that Heeyo is accessible for all kids. The application is available for free and can be downloaded via the Apple or Google Play store.
With AI entering the education domain, a number of universities are already tieing up with companies offering AI-related educational services. Recently, Andrej Karpathy, one of the former founders of OpenAI, launched Eureka Labs, which is an AI education company that aims to transform traditional teaching methods with generative AI.
Furthermore, with AI helping with automating a number of administrative and repetitive tasks, teachers are free’d up for dedicating time for personalised interactions with students, thereby enhancing the quality of education.
With advanced interactive modes of teaching emerging through AI, learning and even teaching is continuously transforming for the better.
Heeyo AI not only offers learning games but also allows parents, educators, and kids to design their own games, including those based on specific ethnic cultures and traditions.
