Microsoft Releases AI ‘Reading Coach’ With Personalized Stories For Free

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Microsoft’s latest announcement is a page-turner—the tech giant has introduced ‘Reading Coach’, a personalized, artificial intelligence assistant created to help learners enjoy reading, and made it available for free to anyone with a Microsoft account.

Reading Coach is developed to support independent and individualized reading practice, catering to the unique needs of each learner. It’s equipped with features that help students tackle challenging words, offering text-to-speech capabilities, syllable breaking, and picture dictionaries. 

A star feature in Reading Coach is the interactive ‘choose your own story’ option, powered by Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service, where learners can craft their own narrative adventures by selecting characters, settings, and appropriate reading levels. The AI then generates tales based on these choices and the learner’s identified challenging words, delivering a truly customized reading journey.

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Reading Coach also gamifies the learning experience. Students can unlock new story settings and characters, earn badges, and track their progress across several dimensions through regular progress reports. By making it fun and driving engagement, Microsoft hopes to foster reading fluency.

The assistant will be particularly beneficial for emerging readers and learners with dyslexia. It has a built-in Immersive Reader to help build confidence and fluency in reading. By detecting learners’ challenging words and embedding opportunities for additional, independent practice, Reading Coach ensures that every student can progress at their own pace.

In the near future, Reading Coach is set to integrate with learning management systems like Canva to further supplement utility and accessibility in educational settings.

Educators aren’t left out of the loop. As students engage with Reading Coach, teachers, parents, and guardians can monitor their progress, including which words were practiced, the number of attempts made, and the tools used. They can then use this valuable feedback to adapt their instruction to individual needs. The tool offers a level of customization that allows grownups to tailor learning experiences efficiently.

Now available in public preview, the Reading Coach tool is accessible to a broader audience, with a dedicated Windows app version also in the pipeline.