CapyChat

Published on Mar 23rd, 2023

Solution

Name of Finalist Allison Huang

Location Mercer Island, WA

CapyChat is an AI-powered communication tool that helps children with autism express themselves. With this tool, children can chat with their favorite animals in multiple languages or create drawings that AI will transform into text. Similarly, CapyChat can produce text and help users create a drawing. CapyChat is continuing to develop its chat features and aims to build out their application.

The Problem

Kids with ASD or communication anxiety such as selective mutism often communicate differently. It is hard for them to express themselves and have them to understand from others. I believe that everyone express themselve in their unique ways. We don't necessary need to speak to get our ideas across.

Your Solution

CapyChat is using AI to provide an animal chat to provide companionship. It can also understand drawings to translate them into text, and vice versa. This way, kids can express themselves in the way that's most comfortable for them!

Key Features:

PetChat: Kids can chat with their favoriate animals and communicate in many languages: English, Spanish, French, Chinese etc. They can play games, ask questions or simply hang out.
Drawing-to-Text: the AI-powered tool turns the drawings into text, making it so much easier for others to understand what they're trying to say.
Text-to-Drawing: We can take text and create cool drawings together.

Founding Story

I have selective mutism, a condition that makes me afraid to speak at school. I couldn't talk to any teachers until I reached grade 6, but then I had this incredible teacher who allowed me to use drawings to share my ideas, which was super helpful.

Over the last summer, a team of us at girls who code created an app that helps kids who have ASD learn through images and games. I have been working on the chat part ever since. AI can generate and understand images, which made me realize that it's totally possible to build an app that helps kids communicate using chatbot and sketches.

Your Impact

In the short-term, our focus is on perfecting the chat part of our tool, ensuring it works well. To achieve this, we will gather user feedback, perform regular updates, and continuously optimize the chat. We want to make CapyChat helpful and enjoyable for the kids so they use it.

We are also planning to build an app to provide a better experience. This will make the app more interactive and engaging with sounds, images and videos. WE want to understand kids' drawings and we can communicate with drawings or text or sound. This will enable users to communicate more naturally and in the non-verbal way.

To grow our team, we'll need developers, designers, and experts in AI. We plan to work with schools and non-profit organizations to improve the tool. This way, we can reach more people who need our tool and learn how to make it even better.

Video

I am stepping up to be a Changemaker because I believe that everyone deserves to be heard with their ideas and thoughts, regardless of whether they can express them verbally or not.