Guide
It leads with a question, not an answer — a nudge, then a clue, then more help only if needed — and steps back as the child's confidence grows.
In development
Lumio
Education is not for competition. Lumio is an after-school AI learning companion for children aged 3 to 10 — built for cooperation, collaboration and the joy of discovery: knowing something today that you did not know yesterday, and wanting to learn more tomorrow.
It is made for the hours after school — alongside school and teachers, never a substitute for them.
The companion
A soft, luminous creature
The AI companion is a soft, luminous creature of no recognisable species.
It glows. It remembers. It never loses patience.
The approach
Adaptive guided discovery
Child development research has known for decades how young children learn best. AI is the first technology that can deliver it for every child, in every session. Lumio's companion moves between three ways of teaching as the child needs them — the child never sees a label, only a companion that seems to know what kind of help is needed.
The lessons themselves are made with AI too: each one's plan, its pictures and its spoken narration.
Explore
The child moves through a rich world and the companion watches, noticing what they linger on, and asks rather than tells. A child who is exploring is not lost.
Play
An open brief with no single right answer — write a story, design an experiment, build a game — and the child owns what they make.
No scores, real progress
Progress a child can see, without a ranking
Scores teach children to chase the score, and leaderboards teach them that learning is a race. Lumio shows progress in the child's own words instead: moments of “I can now…” that gather into a sky of stars which only ever grows — and is never compared with anyone else's.
Every session closes with one question — what did you learn today? — and the child's answer becomes part of that record.
What the companion is designed to do
- Give a hint before an answer, always warmly.
- Notice frustration early and offer a simpler step, not a new topic.
- Remember what a child loves — trains, space, cooking — and learn through it.
- End sessions gracefully, leaving a question for next time.
- Check facts against a fixed reference: the AI chooses how to explain that 3 + 2 = 5, never whether it does.
- Work with a model from any of several AI companies, with the same rules whichever it is — and, as planned, with one that runs on the family's own device.
For every child
Four age groups, one inclusive design
Grows with the child
Four groups — ages 3–5, 5–7, 7–9 and 9–10 — chosen by a parent as a starting point, then calibrated to the actual child within the first sessions. The companion begins as a patient guide for the youngest and becomes a near-peer for the oldest.
Designed for the full range of children
Support for reading, attention, sensory and motor needs, chosen by what a child finds difficult rather than by a diagnosis — and adaptable by a parent at any time. Designing for the children with the greatest needs makes it better for everyone.
Grounded in the work of Piaget, Vygotsky, Montessori, Hirsh-Pasek, Csikszentmihalyi and Dweck. How that research becomes a design is set out in full in Education Is Not for Competition (Medium).
Children's data
What happens to what a child says
A companion for young children has to earn a parent's trust before anything else. This is how Lumio handles a child's information today, and what has to be in place before it is released.
How the current build works
- Progress stays on the family's device. The child's profile, what they have learned and their “I can now” stars are kept in a database on that device, not on a server of ours.
- Conversations are not saved. Neither the app nor our server keeps a record of what a child and the companion say to each other.
- To reply, the companion sends the conversation to an AI company. During a session, the child's first name or nickname, their age group and the words they type or say go to the AI model that answers — today one from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google — and that company's terms then apply.
- Speech becomes text through the device's own speech service or, for some languages, an AI company's — and only once a parent has agreed to that. Until then, nothing is recorded and the child types instead.
- If a child seems upset, the app records that it happened, not what was said, for a parent to review.
- No advertising, analytics or tracking of any kind.
- A parent area behind a PIN — on phones and tablets, sign-in by the parent's phone number — where a parent sets how long sessions last.
- A parent can delete everything stored about their child, in one step. The one thing kept is a record that a safety alert happened — when, never what was said — and the parent is told so before deleting.
Before it is released
- A parent can see and export everything stored about their child.
- Plain-language parental consent when the app is first set up.
- An AI model that runs on the family's own device, so a child's words need not leave it.
- A legal review in each country before launch, against children's privacy law — COPPA in the US, GDPR and the UK Children's Code in Europe, and India's DPDP Act.
Lumio is in development
Parents, teachers and schools who would like to follow its progress are welcome to get in touch. This site collects nothing about children — or anyone.