dev.ua spoke with the teacher of a team of tenth-graders from the Polytechnic Lyceum «KPI», who became finalists of the Ukrainian Teens in AI 2026 selection and created Speachie, an application for training communication and preparing for interviews.
dev.ua spoke with the teacher of a team of tenth-graders from the Polytechnic Lyceum «KPI», who became finalists of the Ukrainian Teens in AI 2026 selection and created Speachie, an application for training communication and preparing for interviews.
The Ukrainian selection of Teens in AI 2026 took place in a two-day intensive format, where 10 teams of schoolchildren developed prototypes of AI solutions for education, medicine, and social tasks. According to the results of the selection, HOW AI with the inclusive platform EyraLearning took first place, RoboLegion with the Perekladon application took second place, and the PL_KPI team with the Speachie project took third place.
«The idea for Speachie started with a simple observation: in schools we are taught hard skills well — math, programming, theory — but we are hardly taught how to speak confidently, present ourselves, or pass an interview,» explains the team’s teacher, Ivan Komarov.
According to him, the first task was to create a safe space where teenagers could practice speaking and gradually overcome their fear of real conversations.
The team is aimed at teenagers aged approximately 14+. No special training is required, just basic skills in using a smartphone or computer.
«The application will be useful in situations of preparing for admission, participating in competitions or hackathons, first interviews, presenting your own ideas, or simply for developing confidence in communication,» says Ivan.
Speachie has two large blocks: learning and training. The training section contains the principles of effective communication: how to build a response and maintain structure. The training section contains practical modules where the user immediately practices the skills.
Training modules:
«AI interview is a recreation of a real conversation with a digital avatar. You can choose different topics: going through an interview, talking to your manager about a salary increase, discussing work situations, or other life scenarios,» explains Komarov.
Speachie is currently in the MVP stage, which the team assembled during a hackathon. The main modules are already working: the user can run a simulation and get feedback.
«We haven’t conducted full-scale testing on teenagers yet, but we plan to do so in the near future to get real feedback and improve the functionality,» says Komarov.
The development is being financed with their own funds. The next step will be a pilot at the Polytechnic Lyceum «KPI» to test the product in a real educational environment, collect feedback from students and teachers, and understand what exactly needs improvement. After that, the team plans to apply to startup programs and competitions to attract funding and scale.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how students from the «Lyceum of New Learning Technologies» in Kropyvnytskyi developed an AI tool that detects discrimination in social media posts during the Ukrainian stage of the international hackathon Teens in AI, where they won. The team will then participate in the selection for the international stage of the hackathon.
