From Passion to Project: The Birth of BookBuddy AI

In a world where children are surrounded by endless digital distractions, the Arabic language often struggles to hold its place. Traditional books feel static, modern tools are mostly in foreign languages, and the joy of reading in Arabic is fading. Every journey begins with a question. For us, it was: Why is Arabic, a language of history and beauty, losing its presence among today’s youth?

This was the challenge that inspired our team Maria Latifa Benkhelifa, Sarah Allam,and  Arwa Abboud to create BookBuddy AI (كتابي صديقي), an intelligent reading assistant that transforms Arabic PDFs into interactive, living stories. With BookBuddy, children don’t just read; they ask, listen, practice, and explore.

We noticed three pressing challenges:

• Arabic reading habits are in decline as children turn to digital content in other languages.
  
  
• Traditional books feel static, they cannot speak back, answer questions, or spark dialogue.
  
  
• Modern educational tools in Arabic are limited, leaving learners disengaged.
  
  

This problem became our mission. As part of the Women in AI program, we were given just two months to design and deliver a graduation project that applied our new skills. Out of that challenge, BookBuddy AI (كتابي صديقي مع الذكاء الاصطناعي) was born.

What made this project possible was a technical breakthrough. We took a non-bilingual large language model, LLaMA 3.2 with 1B parameters, and fine-tuned it on a synthetic Arabic dataset that we carefully designed and created as a team. By curating culturally relevant examples and applying retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) techniques, we transformed a model that had little understanding of Arabic into a tool capable of engaging in meaningful, context-aware dialogue in Arabic.

At its core, BookBuddy is an AI-powered interactive reading assistant that transforms Arabic PDFs into a living, breathing experience. With it, a child can:

• Ask questions and get instant, context-based answers.
  
  
• Listen to the book’s responses with natural Arabic pronunciation.
  
  
• Practice speaking and writing, building confidence in language skills.
  
  
• Form sentences and engage in dialogue that strengthens comprehension and imagination.
  
  

But when the program ended, we realized our journey with BookBuddy was only just beginning. We didn’t want to stop at a prototype built for graduation. We wanted the project to grow further to become a platform that reimagines Arabic learning for classrooms, libraries, and homes across the region.

That’s why we are now working to expand BookBuddy’s features: integrating OCR for scanned texts and image based books such as comic stories, building VR storytelling environments and interactive simulations, introducing cartoon companions for interactive lessons, and even exploring sign language support to make it inclusive for every learner including people of determination, by giving them the chance to learn and engage with Arabic through sign language.

What started as a graduation project has become our shared vision: a movement to revive Arabic literacy through AI, and to prove that technology can preserve culture while inspiring the future.