A bedtime story
is more powerful
than we know.

Research shows that a parent reading to their child is a stronger determinant of future success than family size, parental education, or social class. The more stories a child hears, the greater their vocabulary becomes, the more empathy they develop, and the better equipped they are to handle life.

But what about children whose parents cannot read? With 773 million illiterate adults worldwide, countless children grow up missing out on storytime, putting them at a great disadvantage. What if AI could help?

On behalf of ProLiteracy, America's largest illiteracy-focused nonprofit, we at Droga5 and Accenture Song partnered with Respeecher, a voice cloning company, with the goal of enabling all parents, regardless of their reading level, to narrate stories in their own voice. With just a phone, any mother or father could share a bedtime story with their children. To develop a proof of concept, we worked with Felicia, a mother of four who is learning how to read and write at Neuhaus, a member organization of ProLiteracy. First, we made base recordings of a voice actor narrating various children's books. Then, we recorded Felicia telling her life story. With machine learning, we matched both audio recordings to authentically recreate Felicia’s voice reciting the children's books.

But what if we pushed this further? What if low-literate parents all over the world could experience what Felicia did? What if, with a couple of taps in an app, parents could record their voice, select a children’s book, and hear themselves tell that story to their children?