How AI-drawn illustrations are teaching kids to read

A child's attachment to their dog can help them learn to read and count.

• That's the breakthrough idea from Daniel Cohen, the Denver-based entrepreneur behind the startup Two Tails Story Co.

How it works: The company creates personalized alphabet and numbers books that include realistic drawings of the family pet on each page.

• All it takes is two photos of the dog. Then the funny, colorful illustrations come to life with an artificial intelligence program that creates life-like drawings of the pet and inputs the reader into scenes. Illustrators also review the work.
• "Every dog [in the book] will look like your dog … that's our value proposition, it's not a cartoon," Cohen says. "It's a hand-drawn sketch of your dog, very similar to if you commissioned something."

The intrigue: Cohen — a former real estate company owner — moved into the education technology space after the civil unrest in 2020.

• "The bond between people was just getting thinner and thinner culturally, I was seeing it and feeling it," he says. "I wanted to start a company that used as its core foundational drive the power of … healthy attachment."