X
Business

Google brings AI to studying with Socratic

Ahead of the new school year, Google is re-launching a mobile learning app it acquired last year.
Written by Stephanie Condon, Senior Writer
own.png

Google this week started rolling out a revamped version of a mobile learning app, called Socratic, that the tech giant acquired last year. The updated app, with new machine learning-powered features, coincides with the start of the school year, as well as other Google for Education initiatives. 

Also: How Apple, Google, and Microsoft stack up in education technology: Hardware, software, and deployment      

Socratic aims to help both high school and university students in their studies outside of the classroom. If students need help answering a study question, they can now use the Socratic app to ask a question with their voice or to take a picture of a question in their study materials. The app will then find relevant material from across the web. 

If a student is trying to solve a complex problem, the app can now use algorithms to identify underlying concepts that may need further explanation. For example, as Google demonstrates in its blog post, a student could take a picture of a square root equation and receive help understanding how to simplify square roots.


 TechRepublic:


The app also now offers more than 1,000 subject guides covering high school and university-level topics. 

The revamped app is now available on iOS and will be available for Android in the fall. 

More on Google's Education initiatives:

Editorial standards