Ello Launches Storytime, New Version of AI Reading App Where Kids Create Their Own Stories

Combining Decodable Skills with Developed Storylines and Advanced Vocabulary, Kids and Ello Can Now Take Turns Reading Engaging, Child-directed Stories Out Loud

/EIN News/ -- SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 30, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ello, developer of the world’s most advanced AI reading app, just released a new feature where children can create their own books.

Ello is a fully digital AI reading companion that harnesses proprietary, industry-leading child speech technology to democratize personalized reading instruction at scale. Leveraging the world’s largest child speech data set and the largest library of decodable children’s books, Ello uses advancements in artificial intelligence technology to support parents with struggling readers for a small fraction of what a reading tutor would cost. Ello listens to a child read and provides motivation and coaching alongside a progression of phonics lessons and decodable books which span reading levels from Kindergarten through 3rd Grade.

Now, with the new “Ello Storytime” feature, kids can create their own books by picking their favorite settings, characters, and plots. Ello takes these choices and creates a story with practice reading words tailored to the child’s level. During the interactive “Storytime” experience, the child practices new vocabulary and phonics skills out loud while Ello reads the personalized story.

Before launching, Ello’s engineering team spent months testing Storytime for safety. “AI-generated content presents immense opportunities for children to have personalized, engaging experiences, but it also comes with risks,” commented Catalin Voss, co-founder and CTO of Ello, who led the technical development of Storytime. “We have conducted extensive safety tests and human reviews on thousands of books and images generated using AI. While this is of course an ambitious step, we have guardrails in place to make sure that Storytime will be safe and appropriate for children – including giving children a predetermined set of story options, instead of letting them freestyle.”

Unlike other Generative AI tools for children to write stories, Storytime books fit into a scope and sequence of Science of Reading phonics instruction. For example–Angela, in first grade, is practicing her “ch” sound with Ello this week. She asks Ello to create a story about a cat making friends at school. Ello will write this story for Angela, strategically place in words like “chair” and “cheer,” and prompt Angela to practice reading those words out loud on the page.

“We are so excited to bring our newest version of Ello to families,” said Dr. Elizabeth Adams, Co-founder and CXO of Ello. “Giving kids some control over the content they are reading helps to support the child’s motivation to read by reflecting their interests and lives. Our GenAI technology makes it possible to create these books quickly, and we are now able to build books that combine the important phonics skills kids need to become strong readers with natural language text that gives them access to more advanced vocabulary and storylines. In Ello Storytime, kids can practice new words out loud which are relevant to that week’s phonics lesson, and also listen to Ello read to them, much the way they would with a 1:1 reading coach.”

About the Ello Reading App
Ello is powered by Adaptive Learn, its state-of-the-art AI system that understands, adapts and responds to a child just as a teacher or reading coach would, using principles backed by the Science of Reading to create a fun and educational journey for children in grades K-3.

For $14.99/month, the Ello subscription app offers families access to reading coaching which often costs hundreds of dollars–and families who receive government assistance can qualify for a discounted price of $2.99/month. The Ello app works on iPhones and iPads running iOS 14 and newer.

Outside of the subscription app, Ello has made its library of decodable children’s books available online for free, and has also partnered with low-income schools to offer the subscription for free.

About Ello
Ello is helping to solve childhood illiteracy by scaling 1:1 instruction to maximize the learning potential of all children, regardless of resources. Its first product is the world’s most advanced reading companion, powered by proprietary speech recognition and generative AI. It listens, understands, and engages with children to teach them critical reading skills as they read out loud. To date, over 700K children’s books have been read on the Ello platform, which serves tens of thousands of families with more than 1,000 decodable books available in the Ello library. Ello is founded by a team of experts in education, childhood development and artificial intelligence, and backed by investors including Y Combinator, Goodwater, Project A and Homebrew. Learn more at https://ello.com.

Kerry Metzdorf
Big Swing Communications
978-463-2575
kerry@big-swing.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/79585ca2-ed4e-493a-aa7f-5e187536b505