Story Teller

An AI story app that listens. It uses Modulate to detect a child's emotions, generating custom tales via Airia agents. It even alerts parents if signs of bullying or sadness are found.

Comment

Inspiration

Bedtime stories are a universal bond, but many children struggle to express their digital-age anxieties. I wanted to build a bridge between imaginative play and emotional safety—a storyteller that doesn't just talk at kids, but truly listens to how they feel.

What it does

Story Teller is an empathetic AI companion. It analyzes a child’s speech for both words and emotional tone. It then crafts a personalized story in real-time using live web data. If the AI detects signs of bullying or depression, it adapts the narrative to be supportive and instantly alerts the parents via email.

How we built it

  • Voice Analysis: Used Modulate to extract text and emotive metadata (sadness, excitement, etc.).
  • Orchestration: Airia Agents serve as the brain, coordinating the flow.
  • Content Retrieval: Used Brave MCP to safely search and scrape age-appropriate story elements and news.
  • Safety Layer: A dedicated agent monitors inputs for "at-risk" keywords or tones to trigger parental alerts.
  • Narration: ElevenLabs converts the final story into a high-quality, expressive voice.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest hurdle was latency. Chaining together four different AI services (speech-to-emotion, search, generation, and TTS) can create a "long pause." I had to optimize the agent handshakes and look into streaming the text to ElevenLabs to ensure the story starts as soon as the child finishes talking.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am incredibly proud of the Parental Alert System. Creating a tool that can distinguish between a "sad story" a child is telling and "actual sadness" in their voice allows the app to act as a proactive safety net in the home.

What we learned

I learned that emotion is as important as syntax. In the context of "Applied AI," processing how something is said is often more valuable than what is said, especially when it involves the mental well-being of a younger audience.

What's next for Story Teller

The next phase involves moving toward On-Device AI (Edge AI) to improve privacy and reduce latency further. I also plan to add "Visual Storytelling" by generating matching AI images for each chapter of the generated story.

Built With

  • airia
  • elevenlabs
  • modulate
  • streamlit
Share this project:

Updates