Could AI actually make the internet safer for kids?
Nashville entrepreneur Tim Estes believes so. After building up his career in artificial intelligence, Estes is back in the founder seat with Angel AI. The platform is designed to change the way children interact with and learn from the digital world.
Angel AI’s New View Of The Internet
Angel AI is more than a parental control or monitoring tool. Instead of just adding content filters, Angel AI has built a new type of child-focused browser interface.
Children can ask the voice assistant questions in their own words. Answers that come back in a way that is “aligned with their age and maturity level,” Estes said. “The complexity of the answer and the topics that are allowed are based on how old the kid is.”
Developed by AI experts, technologists, child psychologists, and parental feedback, the platform uses large language models (LLMs), natural language processing (NLP), and speech recognition to build a better, children-safe internet search tool. Angel AI starts to pull in age-appropriate images and videos without the need for a child to go onto separate apps or websites.
The AI learns about the child’s interests and hobbies to help generate more engaging, individualized answers.
Empowering Parents
In traditional web browsers and on most social media platforms, inappropriate, sexual, and self-harm content is easily accessible. Angel AI is built to ensure such content never reaches young users.
Of course, there are some questions that the Angel AI team believes are best answered directly by parents or guardians. So the platform notifies parents when a child asks a sensitive questions around topics such as puberty, politics, and religion. The AI can provide parents with potential answers that align with their household beliefs, or the parents can decide to tackle the sensitive question directly.
“Angel is a tool for parents. It is not going to replace the values of parents.”
Using a subscription model means that Angel AI doesn’t rely on advertisement revenue or on selling user data. And unlike most web-based platforms, Estes said Angel AI isn’t designed to increase the amount of time a child spends using the platform.
Building Tech For Kids
Estes is no stranger to the AI startup space. For over twenty years he led Nashville-based Digital Reasoning, building one of the earliest successful AI companies to come out of Music City. He grew the company to a Series D funding round with a global employee base. The business was ultimately acquired in 2020.
Angel AI’s mission is personal for him. With two kids under the age of ten, Estes wants to build AI that is ethical for the next generation. With Angel AI, he believes AI can engage a child’s curiosity while protecting them along the way.
“Our AI sits between content and the child to ensure safety…which opens up safe entertainment options,” he told Hypepotamus. “You shouldn’t have to keep your child away from all the power that AI can do in opening up their curiosity and creativity. AI can be designed to be net healthy for children to engage with and actually counteract a lot of the stuff they’d normally encounter on the internet.”
Funding An AI-Friendly Internet
Angel AI announced today it has closed a $4.75 million seed funding round. San Francisco-based, AI-focused firm Cortical Ventures led the round. Village Global and several other prominent angel investors joined the round as well, according to a press release.
“Angel AI is solving a problem that every parent in the world encounters and yet remains unsolved: allowing their kids to use the internet without exposing them to inappropriate and unsafe content,” said Jeremy Achin, general partner at Cortical Ventures, said. “Changing this paradigm is a massive opportunity and one Cortical is excited to support as we continue to focus on the theme of AI-powered human engagement for good.”
To date, Estes has assembled a team of eleven people, with more hiring on the horizon. 100 parents are currently beta-testing the app. Estes said that the plan is to open up the waitlist in the coming months.
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Featured Photo From Angel AI Blog