Cofounder · AI Storytelling for Families
Plaio
A co-authoring tool where children are the authors of their own stories.
“Harry Potter is an extraordinary story. But it is not your kid's creation. There are 600 million children on earth, every one walking around with a universe in their head that the world will never see. That is a heartbreaking waste of magic. Plaio exists to change it.”
Around age 10, children's imaginative play drops sharply as passive screen consumption takes over. I cofounded Plaio (with Zahra Hejrati) to reverse that — not with another content platform, but with an AI co-authoring tool where children are the authors. A child narrates the story. A parent co-creates it. The AI illustrates and structures it. The output: a real, printed hardcover book with the child's name on the cover.
Fifteen minutes, from a child's voice to a real book.
Short enough to fit inside a bedtime routine, structured enough to produce something real.
Parent and child open a session together. The child drives the narrative; the parent shapes the direction. No solo mode — co-authoring is the design.
As the story develops, Plaio generates illustrated pages around the child's words. The AI is the illustrator, not the author.
The completed story is printed as a hardcover book — the child's name on the spine, their world between the covers.
A world that grows with the child.
Most apps optimize for isolated daily sessions. Plaio is designed against disposability — around an accumulating world of the same characters and deepening lore, multiple books over years. It earns return visits through narrative continuity, not notification hooks.
First session. A character is named, a world is set. The story accumulates from here.
The same characters grow into new adventures. Narrative continuity drives re-engagement.
Multiple volumes. A world with its own internal logic, built across years of sessions.
The books document not just the stories, but who the child was when they told them.
Two sessions, San Francisco and UC Berkeley, with families recruited through community networks. Kids aged 5–12, parents as co-creators. Not usability tests — design research.
After the digital session ended, kids reached for pencils and LEGOs, extending the story world by hand. Plaio didn't replace physical creativity. It ignited it.
Plaio doesn't filter unsafe interactions. It makes them structurally impossible.
Most AI companies serving children bolt safety on top: content filters, age gates, parental controls that go unconfigured. The flaw is structural — the child is alone with the AI. Plaio requires a parent in every session. Co-authoring is the safety architecture, not a feature added after the fact, but the product model itself.
Once the session started, children took creative control and parents became collaborators, not supervisors. The shared screen changed the family dynamic entirely.
Kids wanted their name on the cover before they'd written the last page. That sense of authorship drove them to keep going; it didn't wait for completion.
Crayons came out after the session. Kids drew characters by hand to feed back into the story world; digital and analog extended each other naturally.
Several parents asked if they could make their own book. Co-authoring with a child surfaced something they'd forgotten they wanted for themselves.
- —Private beta — not yet publicly available
- —Research workshops with families in San Francisco and UC Berkeley
- —Recruiting the first 200 founding families for early access