On April 23rd, World Book Day, Tencent officially launched "Penguin Reading Companion," an AI reading assistant. Powered by Tencent's HunYuan large model and Tencent Yuanqi platform, and spearheaded by Tencent SSV Digital Education Lab, this innovative product aims to provide primary and secondary school students with a technologically engaging and fun reading experience.
Designed to cater to students' grade levels, reading abilities, and interests, "Penguin Reading Companion" accurately recommends suitable reading materials. Leveraging AI technology, it transcends the static limitations of traditional reading, transforming text into a three-dimensional experience. When a student opens a book, the author comes to life as a "digital person," acting as a time-traveling reading buddy to bridge the gap between children and classic literature, making historical works more approachable. For example, students can read Lu Xun's Chao Hua Xi Shi alongside a digital Lu Xun.
The underlying logic of "Penguin Reading Companion" is the deep integration of "education + AI," offering diverse reading modes to meet various learning needs. The focused mode combines text and illustrations to cultivate in-depth reading skills, supporting highlighting, annotation, and quote saving. In the reading aloud mode, AI real-time identifies and tracks students' reading progress, correcting pronunciation and offering encouragement to boost confidence. The audiobook mode removes spatial limitations, allowing the AI companion to read in the student's preferred voice and tone.
Furthermore, "Penguin Reading Companion" uses AI to guide students through reading exercises, reinforcing knowledge and providing encouraging feedback. It employs interactive questioning to stimulate deep thinking, guiding students to find the right answers and improving their questioning and problem-solving abilities. The AI companion can also use insightful questions to analyze plot logic, such as "If you were the protagonist, what would you do? Why?" Trained on millions of data points, the AI companion can understand complex questions and simulate Socratic questioning to foster critical thinking, rather than relying solely on rote memorization.
By incorporating role-playing and scenario generation technology, "Penguin Reading Companion" immerses children in the world of the books. In Journey to the West, the AI companion guides students to choose characters, acting as other characters themselves for interactive role-playing, recreating scenes and enhancing understanding of the plot and character relationships, deepening emotional resonance and comprehension.
To further boost reading interest, "Penguin Reading Companion" uses gamification. Each child becomes a "reading adventurer," with each book designed as a mysterious exploration map, and chapters as scattered island levels. Children unlock progress markers through reading, creation, and interaction; for example, completing a chapter lights up a wisdom star. Accumulating stars reveals a larger knowledge map. Collecting enough stars unlocks a mystery box containing random rewards, making daily reading exciting.
After completing reading tasks and interactions, "Penguin Reading Companion" automatically generates a personalized reading summary report, visualizing reading time, progress, AI interactions, exercises, rewards, and reflections. It supports sharing reading achievements, boosting motivation and goal setting.
"Penguin Reading Companion" is more than an AI reading tool; it's reshaping the reading education ecosystem. For children, it transforms classic books from "assigned reading" into "interactive theaters," guiding them from "passive reading" to "active exploration." For educators, it leverages AI to overcome time and space constraints, making expert guidance and personalized feedback accessible to families in even the most remote areas. For the education landscape as a whole, it achieves, for the first time, "trackable reading process, quantifiable reading outcomes, and sustainable reading interest."