Media Monks and World Literacy Foundation jointly developed a new device called “Literacy Pen”, which uses AI to assist illiterate adults with spelling and help in writing.
Illiteracy is a curse for humankind in this modern-era and it’s every country’s responsibility to eradicate illiteracy. As of 2024, 773 million people are illiterate globally. In view of addressing this issue, World Literacy Foundation, a global non-profit organization who wants to eradicate illiteracy in next 16 years and Media Monks, a digital-media, technology and consulting company comes together and the result is this “Literacy Pen”.
What is Literacy Pen?
Literacy Pen is a tech-device that can be attached to a pen and assists people by showing the spelling of a word while writing. It has a small cuboid display, a built-in microphone, an action button and a pairing system.
It works like this: The user has to first speak the word they want to know the spelling of, to the device. The device then uses Google’s open-source speech-to-text technology to transcribe the voice into text and displays it on the display. The user can copy the word onto the paper by looking at the display.
The literacy-device with claws can be coupled to any pen or pencil and is compact, lightweight and comfortable for people of all ages.
Media Monks and World Literacy Foundation plans to manufacture 2,000 such devices for distribution to over 50 locations worldwide by 2025.
Since the device is minimalistic with only a display and voice-to-text technology, it eases the writing process than learning apps on phones, the company claims.
“The Literacy Pen is one of the most significant advances in the past 20 years to aid illiterate young people and adults who face adversity and exclusion in day-to-day life,” says Andrew Kay, CEO of the World Literacy Foundation.
It’s not clear yet that how AI is blended into this device and whether it would be available in any other languages than English. However, I believe that it would be compatible with other languages soon, as it uses Google’s speech-to-text technology.
Do you think that this would help illiterate people to write and learn?
(For more such interesting informational, technology and innovation stuffs, keep reading The Inner Detail).
Kindly add ‘The Inner Detail’ to your Google News Feed by following us!