South Korea's Science and Technology Hospital develops app to promote communication with autistic children

A research team led by Professor Hong Hwa-jeong of the Department of Industrial Design at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), together with Naver AI Lab and the Todagim Child Development Center, is working to improve communication between autistic children and their parents.
The company announced that it has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) app called "Access Talk" that enables this. Access Talk is a typing app designed to guide conversations between autistic children who have difficulty speaking and their parents.
The research team is using AI to recommend individual vocabulary cards in real time that reflect the child's interests and situation, while also providing parents with situation-specific dialogue guidance.
The system was designed to provide guidance to children. A "conversation change button" was set up so that children could take the lead in the conversation. Children could directly decide when to start or end the conversation.
The AI also provides a button to ask questions such as, "What about your mother?" to hear the parents' thoughts. In a two-week study of 11 families, parents used the AI-provided dialogue guide.
Professor Hong said about Access Talk, "AI will not just improve the efficiency of communication, but will also promote connections and understanding between family members.
We will expand the functionality so that it can become a useful tool."