Google releases Bolo, a speech recognition app that helps Indian kids learn to read

Google, which already dominates India's smartphone, search, and online video market, today launched a learning app for primary school children in the country as part of an effort to cement its grip on the world's fastest-growing internet market. The Android app, called Bolo, aims to help young kids improve their reading comprehension and vocabulary skills in Hindi and English. Bolo (the Hindi word for "speak"), features a range of games and tasks, and it rewards kids as they progress. Bolo, which is powered by Google's speech recognition and text-to-speech technology, first asks kids to read sentences. The app then listens to the efforts and reviews them, and an animated voice assistant -- called Diya -- suggests pronunciation and vocabulary corrections wherever applicable.