Bainu ("how are you?") is a Chinese social networking website written in the Mongolian language. As of 2020 it had about 400,000 users, concentrated in Inner Mongolia. == Core features and positioning == Language and Cultural Characteristics Bainu is based on Traditional Mongolian Script and supports social interactions in the Mongolian language, including various message formats such as text, voice, images, and video. This design aims to preserve and promote Mongolian language and culture, particularly appealing to users in Inner Mongolia and other Mongolian-populated areas. Social Features Instant Messaging: Supports one-on-one private chats and group chats. Users can create interest-based groups or join local communities. Life Sharing: Through the "Chomorlig" feature (similar to Moments or a dynamic feed), users can share daily highlights to enhance community interaction. Location-Based Socializing: Recommends nearby users based on location, making it easier to connect with Mongolian friends in the same city or neighboring regions. Multilingual Support The app interface is available in English, Mongolian, and Simplified Chinese. == Technical Features and User Experience == Cross-Platform Compatibility Supports iPhone, iPad, Mac (with M1 chip or above), and Apple Vision Pro devices, covering users across the Apple ecosystem. Pricing Model Free download and basic features are available. Premium services (e.g., ad-free experience, extended social functions) require a subscription, with pricing options including $0.99/month, $2.99/quarter, and $6.99/year. User Feedback Positive Reviews: Some users praise it as the "best Mongolian-language chat app," recognizing its cultural value and social convenience. Negative Feedback: Reports of app crashes and technical issues, with some users calling for improved stability (e.g., frequent crashes in the iOS version). == Privacy and Data Policy == Bainu collects user data such as location, contact information, and device identifiers, which are linked to user identities. Additionally, user behavior may be tracked through third-party services, raising some privacy concerns. == Current Development and Challenges == User Base As of 2020, Bainu had approximately 400,000 users, primarily concentrated in Inner Mongolia. Policy Impact It was reported by Voice of America (VOA) that the Chinese authorities blocked Bainu on 23 August 2020 in order to prohibit Mongolians from discussing the issue of the authorities’ implementation of "bilingual education" in elementary schools. But now, in 2025, this software is completely available for download and use. see:https://bainu.com/
Enterprise cognitive system
Enterprise cognitive systems (ECS) are part of a broader shift in computing, from a programmatic to a probabilistic approach, called cognitive computing. An Enterprise Cognitive System makes a new class of complex decision support problems computable, where the business context is ambiguous, multi-faceted, and fast-evolving, and what to do in such a situation is usually assessed today by the business user. An ECS is designed to synthesize a business context and link it to the desired outcome. It recommends evidence-based actions to help the end-user achieve the desired outcome. It does so by finding past situations similar to the current situation, and extracting the repeated actions that best influence the desired outcome. While general-purpose cognitive systems can be used for different outputs, prescriptive, suggestive, instructive, or simply entertaining, an enterprise cognitive system is focused on action, not insight, to help in assessing what to do in a complex situation. == Key characteristics == ECS have to be: Adaptive: They must learn as information changes, and as goals and requirements evolve. They must resolve ambiguity and tolerate unpredictability. They must be engineered to feed on dynamic data in real time, or near real time. In the Enterprise, near-real time learning from data requires an agile information federation approach to ingest incremental data updates as they occur, and an unsupervised learning approach to ensure that new best practice is leveraged across the organization in a timely manner. Interactive: They must interact easily with users so that those users can define their needs comfortably. They may also interact with other processors, devices, and Cloud services, as well as with people. In the Enterprise, interactions are controlled via existing workflows and UIs. Therefore, embedding best practices directly into these existing interfaces, in the context of a specific step, is critical to ensure maximum end-user adoption. Iterative and stateful: They must aid in defining a problem by asking questions or finding additional source input if a problem statement is ambiguous or incomplete. They must “remember” previous interactions in a process and return information that is suitable for the specific application at that point in time. In the Enterprise, business context is often structured by a business process, and therefore sufficiently data-rich to make relevant recommendations without significant iterations from the end-user. A stateful memory of overall interactions across communication channels is critical for understanding of context, as a static profile will not capture intent and outcome potential the way behavior does. Contextual: They must understand, identify, and extract contextual elements such as meaning, syntax, time, location, appropriate domain, regulations, user's profile, process, task and goal. They may draw on multiple sources of information, including both structured and unstructured digital information, as well as sensory inputs (visual, gestural, auditory, or sensor-provided). In the Enterprise, Context is fragmented and must be aggregated across data types, sources, and locations. In most business environments, such data is captured in existing enterprise information systems, and the effort is linked to quickly source and unify such information. It is rare to have to directly process sensor, audio or visual data in real-time as direct input into the enterprise cognitive system. Instead, these data types are captured by Enterprise Applications and pre-processed into a binary or text format prior to consumption by the System. == Business applications powered by an ECS == Bottlenose – trends and brands monitoring Cybereason – security threat monitoring Dataminr – social media monitoring
Cross-language information retrieval
Cross-language information retrieval (CLIR) is a subfield of information retrieval dealing with retrieving information written in a language different from the language of the user's query. The term "cross-language information retrieval" has many synonyms, of which the following are perhaps the most frequent: cross-lingual information retrieval, translingual information retrieval, multilingual information retrieval. The term "multilingual information retrieval" refers more generally both to technology for retrieval of multilingual collections and to technology which has been moved to handle material in one language to another. The term Multilingual Information Retrieval (MLIR) involves the study of systems that accept queries for information in various languages and return objects (text, and other media) of various languages, translated into the user's language. Cross-language information retrieval refers more specifically to the use case where users formulate their information need in one language and the system retrieves relevant documents in another. To do so, most CLIR systems use various translation techniques. CLIR techniques can be classified into different categories based on different translation resources: Dictionary-based CLIR techniques Parallel corpora based CLIR techniques Comparable corpora based CLIR techniques Machine translator based CLIR techniques CLIR systems have improved so much that the most accurate multi-lingual and cross-lingual adhoc information retrieval systems today are nearly as effective as monolingual systems. Other related information access tasks, such as media monitoring, information filtering and routing, sentiment analysis, and information extraction require more sophisticated models and typically more processing and analysis of the information items of interest. Much of that processing needs to be aware of the specifics of the target languages it is deployed in. Mostly, the various mechanisms of variation in human language pose coverage challenges for information retrieval systems: texts in a collection may treat a topic of interest but use terms or expressions which do not match the expression of information need given by the user. This can be true even in a mono-lingual case, but this is especially true in cross-lingual information retrieval, where users may know the target language only to some extent. The benefits of CLIR technology for users with poor to moderate competence in the target language has been found to be greater than for those who are fluent. Specific technologies in place for CLIR services include morphological analysis to handle inflection, decompounding or compound splitting to handle compound terms, and translations mechanisms to translate a query from one language to another. The first workshop on CLIR was held in Zürich during the SIGIR-96 conference. Workshops have been held yearly since 2000 at the meetings of the Cross Language Evaluation Forum (CLEF). Researchers also convene at the annual Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) to discuss their findings regarding different systems and methods of information retrieval, and the conference has served as a point of reference for the CLIR subfield. Early CLIR experiments were conducted at TREC-6, held at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on November 19–21, 1997. Google Search had a cross-language search feature that was removed in 2013.
Talking Angela
Talking Angela is a mobile game (formerly a chatbot), developed by Slovenian studio Outfit7 as part of the Talking Tom & Friends series. It was released on 13 November 2012 and December 2012 for iPhone, iPod and iPad, January 2013 for Android, and January 2014 for Google Play. The game's successor, the My Talking Angela game, was released in December 2014. The game takes place in a café in Paris and allows players to interact with Angela, an anthropomorphic white cat in different ways. Players can use coins to purchase makeup, accessories and items, as well as drinks that will trigger different visual effects. The fortune cookie button causes Angela to read out a fortune cookie, while the bird icon will prompt birds to fly around the screen, or have Angela feed them. Players can also pet or poke Angela, as well the café's sign. Prior to their removal, the game featured a chat system and a camera button. Users can engage in conversations with Angela, ask for quizzes or initiate a short snippet of the song "That's Falling In Love". If the player was to type in "Who is an idiot?", Angela would respond with a random swear word. Additionally, inquiring Angela about sexual topics would cause her to reply with "Do you want to talk about sex?", though she will quickly change the topic regardless of what the player writes next. A hoax claiming that Angela's eyes were hidden cameras that enabled hackers or paedophiles to watch children was spread. Despite the claims, Snopes and The Guardian found no evidence. Due to the hoax, Angela received a blue dress, as well as an altered eye asset with a different reflection, and later the chat and camera functions were removed altogether. == Hoaxes == In February 2014, Talking Angela was the subject of an Internet hoax alleging that the application was a front for child predators to exploit children. The rumor, which was widely circulated on Facebook and various websites claiming to be dedicated to parenting, claims that a sinister sexual predator or hacker, asked children for private personal information using the game's text-chat feature. Other versions of the rumour even attributed the disappearance of a child to the game; one news report claimed that a seven year old boy disappeared after downloading the app. Another variation included that it was run by a paedophile ring, citing a man that could be seen in Angela's eyes. The app's developers, Outfit7, later gave a statement refuting the hoaxes. The hoax was eventually debunked by Snopes, a fact-checking website. The site's owners, Barbara and David Mikkelson, reported that they had tried to "prompt" it to give responses asking for private information, but were unsuccessful, even when asking it explicitly sexual questions. While it is true that, in the game with child mode off, Angela does ask for the user's name, age and personal preferences to determine conversation topics, Outfit7 has said that this information is all "anonymized" and all personal information is removed from it. It is also impossible for a person to take control of what Angela says in the game, since the game is based on chatbot software. When the mode was turned on, the chat feature was disabled, meaning no personal questions could be asked. In 2015, the hoax was revived on Facebook, which prompted online security company Sophos and The Guardian to debunk it again. Sophos employee Paul Ducklin wrote that the message being posted on Facebook promoting the hoax was "close to 600 rambling, repetitious words, despite claiming at the start that it didn't have words to describe the situation. It's ill-written, and borders on being illiterate and incomprehensible." Bruce Wilcox, one of the game's programmers, attributed the hoax's popularity to the fact that the chatbot program in Talking Angela aimed to sound realistic. Concern was raised that the game's child mode may have been too easy for children to turn off. It allowed them to purchase "coins", premium currency in the game, via iTunes, and enabled the chat feature. While not "connecting your children to paedophiles", this still raised concerns according to The Guardian. === Impact === The scare significantly boosted the game's popularity, and was credited with helping the app enter the top 10 free iPhone apps soon after the hoax became widely known in February 2015,In the truth the reason there is a man in Angela’s eyes is because of pareidoila, the ability to see through diamonds and other minerals and water bodies and shiny objects,which is the reason why players notice a man in her eyes,The truth is that being Angela’s eyes simply serve as a reflective surface,Because of the low quality of this reflection the reflection was mistaken for a humanoid figure. oref>Smith, Josh (19 February 2014). "Talking Angela App Scare Skyrockets App to Top of Charts". GottaBeMobile.com. Archived from the original on 2 April 2016. Retrieved 10 May 2014. and third most popular for all iPhone apps at the start of the following month. In 2016, Outfit7 removed the chat feature along with the camera function from the app due to this controversy, though this decision was met with criticism.
Grammar checker
A grammar checker, in computing terms, is a program, or part of a program, that attempts to verify written text for grammatical correctness. Grammar checkers are most often implemented as a feature of a larger program, such as a word processor, but are also available as a stand-alone application that can be activated from within programs that work with editable text. The implementation of a grammar checker makes use of natural language processing. == History == The earliest "grammar checkers" were programs that checked for punctuation and style inconsistencies, rather than a complete range of possible grammatical errors. The first system was called Writer's Workbench, and was a set of writing tools included with Unix systems as far back as the 1970s. The whole Writer's Workbench package included several separate tools to check for various writing problems. The "diction" tool checked for wordy, trite, clichéd or misused phrases in a text. The tool would output a list of questionable phrases and provide suggestions for improving the writing. The "style" tool analyzed the writing style of a given text. It performed a number of readability tests on the text and output the results, and gave some statistical information about the sentences of the text. Aspen Software of Albuquerque, New Mexico released the earliest version of a diction and style checker for personal computers, Grammatik, in 1981. Grammatik was first available for a Radio Shack - TRS-80, and soon had versions for CP/M and the IBM PC. Reference Software International of San Francisco, California, acquired Grammatik in 1985. Development of Grammatik continued, and it became an actual grammar checker that could detect writing errors beyond simple style checking. Other early diction and style checking programs included Punctuation & Style, Correct Grammar, RightWriter and PowerEdit. While all the earliest programs started as simple diction and style checkers, all eventually added various levels of language processing, and developed some level of true grammar checking capability. Until 1992, grammar checkers were sold as add-on programs. There were a large number of different word processing programs available at that time, with WordPerfect and Microsoft Word the top two in market share. In 1992, Microsoft decided to add grammar checking as a feature of Word, and licensed CorrecText, a grammar checker from Houghton Mifflin that had not yet been marketed as a standalone product. WordPerfect answered Microsoft's move by acquiring Reference Software, and the direct descendant of Grammatik is still included with WordPerfect. As of 2019, grammar checkers are built into systems like Google Docs, browser extensions like Grammarly and Qordoba, desktop applications like Ginger, free and open-source software like LanguageTool, and text editor plugins like those available from WebSpellChecker Software. == Technical issues == The earliest writing style programs checked for wordy, trite, clichéd, or misused phrases in a text. This process was based on simple pattern matching. The heart of the program was a list of many hundreds or thousands of phrases that are considered poor writing by many experts. The list of questionable phrases included alternative wording for each phrase. The checking program would simply break text into sentences, check for any matches in the phrase dictionary, flag suspect phrases and show an alternative. These programs could also perform some mechanical checks. For example, they would typically flag doubled words, doubled punctuation, some capitalization errors, and other simple mechanical mistakes. True grammar checking is more complex. While a programming language has a very specific syntax and grammar, this is not so for natural languages. One can write a somewhat complete formal grammar for a natural language, but there are usually so many exceptions in real usage that a formal grammar is of minimal help in writing a grammar checker. One of the most important parts of a natural language grammar checker is a dictionary of all the words in the language, along with the part of speech of each word. The fact that a natural word may be used as any one of several parts of speech (such as "free" being used as an adjective, adverb, noun, or verb) greatly increases the complexity of any grammar checker. A grammar checker will find each sentence in a text, look up each word in the dictionary, and then attempt to parse the sentence into a form that matches a grammar. Using various rules, the program can then detect various errors, such as agreement in tense, number, word order, and so on. It is also possible to detect some stylistic problems with the text. For example, some popular style guides such as The Elements of Style deprecate excessive use of the passive voice. Grammar checkers may attempt to identify passive sentences and suggest an active-voice alternative. The software elements required for grammar checking are closely related to some of the development issues that need to be addressed for speech recognition software. In voice recognition, parsing can be used to help predict which word is most likely intended, based on part of speech and position in the sentence. In grammar checking, the parsing is used to detect words that fail to follow accepted grammar usage. Recently, research has focused on developing algorithms which can recognize grammar errors based on the context of the surrounding words. == Criticism == Grammar checkers are considered a type of foreign language writing aid which non-native speakers can use to proofread their writings as such programs endeavor to identify syntactical errors. However, as with other computerized writing aids such as spell checkers, popular grammar checkers are often criticized when they fail to spot errors and incorrectly flag correct text as erroneous. The linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum argued in 2007 that they were generally so inaccurate as to do more harm than good: "for the most part, accepting the advice of a computer grammar checker on your prose will make it much worse, sometimes hilariously incoherent."
NHS COVID-19
NHS COVID-19 was a voluntary contact tracing app for monitoring the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in England and Wales, in use from 24 September 2020 until 27 April 2023. It was available for Android and iOS smartphones, and could be used by anyone aged 16 or over. Two versions of the app were created. The first was commissioned by NHSX and developed by the Pivotal division of American software company VMware. A pilot deployment began in May 2020, but on 18 June development of the app was abandoned in favour of a second design using the Apple/Google Exposure Notification system. Scotland and Northern Ireland had separate contact tracing apps. A 2023 study estimated that in its first year of use, the app's contact tracing function prevented an estimated 1 million cases, and 9,600 deaths. == Description == The app allowed users to: See the alert level of their local authority area (in Wales) or information about restrictions (in England); to enable this, the user must enter the first half of their postcode "Check in" at places displaying an NHS QR code poster (no longer required by legislation after 26 January 2022, removed from the app the next month) Be notified when they have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for the virus Be notified when local health protection teams determine that people with the virus had attended a business or other venue around the same time as the user Check their symptoms, and book a coronavirus test if necessary If asked to self-isolate, receive information and a daily "countdown". At first, "close contact" was defined as being within 2 metres for 15 minutes, or within 4 metres for a longer time. These time durations were reduced from 29 October 2020, to as little as three minutes when the other person is at their most infectious, i.e. soon after they begin showing symptoms. === Implementation === The Android app was coded in Kotlin, and the iOS app in Swift. The backend used Java and is deployed to Amazon Web Services using Terraform. The code of the app and back-end is open-source and available on GitHub. == Context == The app was part of the UK's test and trace programme which was chaired by Dido Harding; from 12 May 2020 Tom Riordan, chief executive of Leeds City Council, led the tracing effort. == First phase and cancellation == === Description === In March 2020, NHSX commissioned a contact tracing app to monitor the spread in the United Kingdom of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the 2020 pandemic, developed by the Pivotal division of American software company VMware. The app used a centralised approach, in contrast to the Google / Apple contact tracing project. NHSX consulted ethicists and GCHQ's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) about the privacy aspects. The app recorded the make and model of the phone and asked the user for their postcode area. It generated a unique installation identification number and also a daily identification number. It then used Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to record the daily identification number of other users nearby. If a user was unwell, they could tell the app about symptoms which are characteristic of COVID-19, such as a fever and cough. These details were then passed to a central NHS server. This would assess the information and notify other users that have been in contact, giving them appropriate advice such as physical distancing. The NHS would also arrange for a swab test of the unwell user and the outcome would determine further notifications to contacts: if the test confirmed infection with COVID-19, the contacts would be asked to isolate. By June 2020, £11.8 million had been spent on the app; in 2020–21, £35 million was spent on the app. === Deployment === The first public trial of the app began on the Isle of Wight on 5 May 2020 and by 11 May it had been downloaded 55,000 times. When the first national contact tracing schemes were launched – Test, Trace, Protect in Wales on 13 May, then on 28 May NHS Test and Trace in England, and Test and Protect in Scotland – the app was not ready to be included. Replying to a question at the government's daily briefing on 8 June, Hancock was unable to give a date for rollout of the app in England, saying it would be brought in "when it's right to do so". On 17 June, Lord Bethell, junior minister for Innovation at the Department of Health and Social Care, said "we're seeking to get something going before the winter ... it isn't a priority for us at the moment". On 18 June, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced development would switch to the Apple/Google system after admitting that Apple's restrictions on usage of Bluetooth prevented the app from working effectively. At the same press briefing Dido Harding, leader of the UK's test and trace programme, said "What we've done in really rigorously testing both our own Covid-19 app and the Google-Apple version is demonstrate that none of them are working sufficiently well enough to be actually reliable to determine whether any of us should self-isolate for two weeks [and] that's true across the world". === Concerns === The first, ultimately rejected, version of the app was subject to privacy concerns, the government backtracking on initial statements that the data collected from the app would not be shared outside the NHS. Matthew Gould, CEO of NHSX, the government department responsible for the app, said the data would be accessible to other organisations, but did not disclose which. Data collected would not necessarily be anonymised and would be held in a centralised repository. Over 150 of the UK's security and privacy experts warned the app's data could be used by 'a bad actor (state, private sector, or hacker)' to spy on citizens. Fears were discussed by the House of Commons' Human Rights Select Committee about plans for the app to record user location data. Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights said this version of the app should not be released without proper privacy protections. The second version of the app, released nationwide, addressed these concerns by employing a decentralised framework, the Apple/Google Exposure Notification system. Under this system, users remain pseudonymous: a person diagnosed with COVID-19 does not know which people are informed about an encounter, and contacted persons do not receive any information about the person diagnosed with COVID-19. The functionality of the app was also questioned in late April and early May 2020, as the software's use of Bluetooth required the app to be constantly running, meaning users could not use other apps or lock their device if the app was to function properly. The developers of the app were said to have found a way of working around this restriction. === Related contracts === Faculty – a company linked to Cambridge Analytica – provided research and modelling to NHSX in support of the response to the pandemic. Palantir, also linked to Cambridge Analytica, provided their data management platform. These contracts began in February and March respectively. == Second phase == As outlined on cancellation of the first app on 18 June 2020, the Department of Health and Social Care published on 30 July a brief description of the "next phase" app. Users would be able to scan a QR code at venues they visit, and later be notified if they had visited a place which was the source of a number of infections; the app would also assist with identifying symptoms and ordering a test. By using the Exposure Notification system from Apple and Google, personal data would be decentralised. Zuhlke Engineering Ltd, the UK branch of Swiss-based Zühlke Group, used 70 staff to complete the development of the app in 12 weeks. Zuhlke Engineering was awarded "Development Team of the Year" title at UK IT Industry awards in November 2021 for development of NHS COVID-19 application. === Timeline === Testing of the app by NHS volunteer responders, and selected residents of the Isle of Wight and the London Borough of Newham, began around 13 August. The app was made available to the public (aged 16 or over) in England and Wales on 24 September. An updated app released on 29 October, in part from collaboration with the Alan Turing Institute, improved the accuracy of measurements of the distance between the user's phone and other phones. At the same time, the duration threshold for determining exposure was reduced; this was expected to lead to an increase in the number of users told to self-isolate. An update to the app in April 2021, timed to coincide with easing of restrictions on hospitality businesses, was blocked by Apple and Google. It was intended that users who tested positive would be asked to share their history of visited venues, to assist in warning others, but this would have contravened assurances by Apple and Google that location data from devices would not be shared. === Statistics and effectiveness === The app was downloaded six million times on the first day it was generally availa
Ed (chatbot)
Ed was a chatbot co-developed by the Los Angeles Unified School District and AllHere Education. Described as a learning acceleration platform, it was the first personal assistant for students in the United States. Part of the district's Individual Acceleration Plan, it was able to interact with students both verbally and visually, offering support in 100 languages. The chatbot was launched on March 20, 2024, as part of the district's plan for academic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and to improve overall academic performance. Utilizing artificial intelligence, Ed organizes data and reports on grades, test scores, and attendance, creating individualized plans for each student. After the company behind it, AllHere, collapsed, the district shuttered operations of the chatbot on June 14, 2024. The firm is under investigation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. == History == On February 14, 2022, Alberto M. Carvalho became the Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, pledging to give the district a full academic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. In December 2022, he announced the Individual Acceleration Plan for the district, which aimed to provide each student with a unique progress report and help them determine if they were on track to graduate. The district faced criticism from disability advocates for its management of Individualized Education Programs, and in April 2022, the United States Department of Education announced that the district had failed to provide appropriate educational services to students with disabilities during the pandemic. The district had been grappling with significant absenteeism issues since the pandemic, which led to declining academic performance and disengagement among students. On February 17, 2023, the district issued a request for proposals to develop a fully integrated portal system. Later that year, they signed a $6 million, five-year contract with AllHere Education, a Boston-based company founded in 2016. The introduction of Ed follows the public launch of ChatGPT, which has been utilized by both teachers and students in educational settings. On August 4, 2023, during an annual address at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Carvalho and the Los Angeles Unified School District announced the launch of Ed. The district invested $4 million into the chatbot, with Carvalho noting that this cost would be halved thanks to donor and grant funding. The chatbot was launched on March 20, 2024. Following its launch, a press conference was held to address security and technology concerns. Carvalho stated that the district had collaborated with security companies and incorporated filters to screen for threatening language. Months after its launch, AllHere Education furloughed most of its staff on June 14, citing their “current financial position” on its website as the reason. After learning about the furlough, the district terminated its dealings with AllHere Education. However, it stated its intention to bring the chatbot back in the future once officials determine the best course of action. Carvalho announced that he would appoint an independent task force to review what went wrong with AllHere Education and the chatbot. On February 25, 2026, the FBI served a search warrant on Carvalho’s home and office in connection with AllHere. The FBI also raided the LAUSD's headquarters. == Service == The chatbot was described as a personal assistant and a "one-stop shop for parents and students" who want to see information about a student's attendance and grades, as well as other resources from the district. Additionally, the application can function as an alarm clock, provide daily lunch menus from the school cafeteria, and offer updates on the location of school buses. The chatbot also helps students and parents who do not speak English as their first language by translating displayed information into approximately 100 different languages. The application can also help with submitting applications and give updates on progress and upcoming assignments. The district stated that the primary goal of Ed was to actively motivate students to complete homework and other tasks. == Reception == The chatbot received a mostly positive reception among parents and observers upon its launch. Some parents and teachers expressed caution about the technology, voicing concerns that the district's push for its implementation lacked public accountability. Rob Nelson from the University of Pennsylvania described the district's strategy as risky, saying that the release felt "like the beginning of a Clippy-level disaster". After the chatbot's shutdown, The 74 criticized it for misusing student data. Chris Whiteley, a former software engineer at AllHere Education, alleged that the data collected by the chatbot likely violated the district's data privacy rules.