Back in February at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, IBM invited teams from all over the world to design apps that harness the Watson supercomputer’s cognitive computing capabilities on smartphones and mobile devices. Out of more than 3,000 submissions, Big Blue announced in April that our entry was among those narrowed down to the shortlist of 25 semi-finalists.

We’re proud to announce that Majestyk has officially been named a FINALIST! Representing one of only five teams worldwide, we will present our proposal to IBM for a chance to be one of the three overall winners awarded with access to the Watson APIs and consulting from IBM Interactive design services.

Our proposal, Fang (Friendly Anthropomorphic Networked Genome), is an artificially intelligent, cuddly plush toy for children capable of answering questions posed in normal language, learning from natural dialog and interacting with its human counterpart. Infused with the power of Watson to analyze, self-configure and self-organize complex input gained from interactions with its user, it will adapt over time to grow with each individual child.

We like to call Fang the “toy of the next generation,” as it will create a tailored experience for each user through a series of contextual, customized interactions. Applying advanced natural language processing, information retrieval, knowledge representation, automated and machine learning technologies Fang will be capable of producing a seamless exploratory dialog. Pairing the lovable toy with an app and dashboard will allow parents and teachers to participate in and encourage a child’s growth. Graphed performance covering a child’s interaction with the toy and metrics such as the number of words a child has been exposed to and used will provide invaluable feedback for directing the educational paths for which each individual child is predisposed to succeed.

This is a huge honor, and credit goes to each and every member of the Majestyk team who has worked tirelessly on this exciting project! You can read more about Fang here. In the coming days and weeks, we’ll be telling you more about how our participation in the Challenge underscores an exciting, fundamental evolution in our business model as well, so keep your eyes on this space!