The Power of Technology: How Heroo Steps Forward to Children’s Safety & Development

• Children’s growth and development has always been a topic people are deeply concerned about;
• A while back Heroo presented the application they have been working on for 3 years – Heroo Mobile;
• Combining learning, fun, and communication, Heroo Mobile not only safely introduces the world of technologies to children but also encourages them to spend as little time with their phones as possible;
• Keeping in mind children’s safety, next year Heroo will equip the application with Samurai Labs’ AI that will assist with detecting and preventing violence online.

What Is Heroo

Children’s growth and development has always been a topic people are deeply concerned about. These days, as technologies are a crucial part of our everyday life, parents care much more about the right ways of using technologies and their impact on children. Get to know Heroo, an up-and-coming startup that aims to tackle this issue.

A while back Heroo presented its application they have been working on for 3 years – Heroo Mobile. The application is a ready-to-use tool for parents who care about children’s safety and development. Combining learning, fun, and communication, Heroo Mobile not only safely introduces the world of technologies to children but also encourages them to spend as little time with their phones as possible.

“Everything has been made in such a way not to make a child addicted”, – Robert Mirek, CEO of Heroo tells ITKeyMedia.

What Is The Concept

To use the full potential of Heroo Mobile parents are offered to buy a subscription. So far there are 5 different packages available for purchase. The idea itself is as follows: each child gets a virtual character that is introducing children to the world of technologies and rewards them with trophies for completing various tasks. As noted, everything is about not making a child addicted, so most of the tasks are to be performed in the real world. “Learning Empathy”, “No Phone Day”, “Learning Cooking”, – are only 3 examples of the tasks a child gets. As a child grows, their virtual character develops as well, therefore gives different tasks and shows different content. Moreover, the entire UX has been developed in such a way so a child is rather encouraged to put their phone down than use it.

“A happy and self-aware Child is a happy and self-aware society”, – Robert Mirek emphasises.

However, Heroo Mobile is not about control, but about educating and developing. Saying more, additionally to the subscription offer, two useful applications are available for children. Both of them are with the primary focus on developing soft skills. Besides, there is still privacy for children: so parents don’t have access to the content of a child’s screen.
It may also serve as a break for your child from the usual learning material that is taught to children in schools. It might be beneficial for children who struggle with focusing, sadness, self-esteem, and other issues. For the time being, it would serve as a distraction for them. However, if you notice that the problems persist and that the application is ineffective, you can seek help from a pediatric developmental health care provider (such as Kinspire) to learn more about your child’s underlying causes. The therapists there may also assist your child in opening up and discussing the issues openly.

What Is The Story

The Heroo team set up to provide both children and their parents with an equal opportunity to build a strong child awareness and happiness, something that is importent with universal internet access for kids and parents available these days. Operating within the industry for 15 years already, Heroo team are foremost parents, who care about releasing the product they would like to use themselves.

The Heroo founders started the company with their own funds (several million PLN), but later were also trusted by more than 650 crowdfunding investors and raised 1 000 000 PLN. Heroo’s relationship doctrine is not just about being limited to financial issues with their investors. Instead, Heroo team is glad to establish cooperation where an exchange of ideas, thoughts, and reflections occurs. Still, Covid-19 and the consequences it brings have affected Heroo, hence they reach out to investors, and they outline this as the biggest challenge they’re facing these days. As to the other figures, the break-even-point is defined as 10k SIM sold, while the first profit is already expected in 2021.

“Our greatest achievement is the fact we contributed to an even greater social discussion about the dangers of poor phone use. Thanks to this, many of us have looked at our habits and those of our children. A lot of people, parents, wrote to us, introducing us to their problems, sometimes dramas related to addiction to screens – which made us even more aware of the problem and showed that what we are doing is a necessity. At Heroo Mobile, we are building a community of committed and aware parents, and this is an achievement for us as important as creating a technology or launching a product on the market, which of course we are very proud of.” ,

– says Robert Mirek

These days Heroo team focuses on attracting the parents of 6-9 years old children who only just started their journey in the world of technologies. However, developing the product for adolescents up to 15 years old is also planned. More than that, their plans are not limited to the existing product. In the near future, the Heroo World is likely to be developed to version 2.0. Basically, children will get their own phones on an android-based operating system. This, as promised, will be the safest phone in the world with access to valuable and carefully selected content.

Heroo & AI

Children’s safety lies at the heart of the company, therefore next year Heroo will equip the application with Samurai Labs’ AI. This will assist with detecting and preventing violence online (particularly hate and pedophile conversations).

At Samurai Labs, a Hybrid AI is being developed, so they don’t rely upon data only. Apart from statistical learning, symbolic learning is also a crucial part of Samurai AI development. Their scientists work closely with various experts like linguistics, cognitive and other specialists. To date, to build the existing AI, Samurai Labs has applied the best of its practices acquired through several years of innovative technologies’ development.

“The approach we follow allows Samurai to discern violence where pure statistical approaches do not have enough data to detect signal from noise, as well as decode violence that might not be obvious when applying classical ML techniques that are great at detecting overt acts but not built for less obvious acts such as mockery or child grooming. It is this approach which produces high precision without a trade-off on recall. Thus Samurai can be deployed to sense and respond autonomously, with a wide range of potential interventions crafted by humans and deployed by the AI based on the situation.”

– Michael Wroczyński, CEO and Co- founder of Samurai Labs tells ITKeyMedia.

It should be said, Samurai Labs’ AI performance is astounding indeed: 9.3 times out of 10 it detects violence correctly, thus making them the best within the market. In a way it’s not surprising: the way AI is built as well as the way it works make the results self-evident. As noted, Samurai AI doesn’t rely upon data only, but considers the actors within the conversation, their roles as to violence, as well as a variety of cognitive and linguistic aspects.

“It is absolutely possible to dramatically reduce violence. Our progress towards eradicating violence will largely depend on the choices we make individually and collectively. Driven by a combination of public policy actions, technologies such as Samurai, and the creation of new business models by telecoms, ISPs, handset manufacturers, software companies and other players, we see an enormous opportunity emerging. There are entire new categories and markets for those companies who can guarantee the safety of children — wherever they are on the net. Innovation among these and other players is creating entire new categories of cyber safety services. As these services come to market we will see a variety of responses from governments protecting kids as a public health concern, to approaches where these decisions are made by families as consumers”,

– Michael Wroczyński says.

Nonetheless, as Michael also states, the issue is also about finding a golden mean. At Samurai Labs they are balancing social values like freedom and privacy with those like health and safety. The cooperation of players such as Samurai Labs and Heroo brings true value into our lives and steps forward to the safety of society.

Technologies definitely have brought a lot of great things to our lives. However, as they do good, they also can have a negative impact on us, and especially on children. The development of such safe opportunities for growing generations is the responsibility we all share. Luckily, there are professionals like Heroo and Samurai Labs that are working on the issue also on an emotional level.