Why?! - The AI learning companion for curious children

Bretzfeld, 10/23/25 - Children ask countless questions every day. With Why?!, there is now an app that transforms children's curiosity into a safe, interest-driven and age-appropriate learning experience.
Developed by parents for parents, the app accompanies children aged 4 to 16 as they explore the world - with a lovingly animated animal character as a learning companion that doesn't pretend to be their friend.

An app that grows with your child
From the first "Why?" questions in preschool to exploring more complex topics in adolescence, Why?! automatically adapts its answers to the child's age.
Younger children can ask questions by voice, while older ones can use a full chat interface.

Learning and knowledge
A special highlight is the Bottle & Jar system: each week, children receive a "knowledge bottle" that they can use over seven days. This not only conveys knowledge but also playfully fosters awareness for conscious use of digital resources.

In the learning overview, parents receive a summary and the topics their child is interested in.
No detailed chat histories are shared with parents, yet the information is sufficient to plan the next family trip to the zoo or to give grandparents gift ideas.

Safety and family focus
Why?! ensures maximum data protection from the start. Only minimal child data is stored, on servers located in Europe.
The app also complies with the strict COPPA and GDPR regulations for children's applications.

Parents retain full control over which topics the AI may discuss with the child - through individually adjustable topic areas in a PIN-protected parent section.
Up to five child profiles can be created, allowing families to use the app flexibly.
Children have the reassurance that their parents won't see every detail of their conversations.

Availability and subscriptions
Why?! can be tested at a significantly reduced rate for the first month. Afterwards, flexible monthly and annual subscriptions are available, based on the number of children in the household.
There are no hidden costs and no in-app purchases.

Conclusion
Why?! transforms children's curiosity into safe, joyful learning - offering families valuable support in everyday life.
For curious children and thoughtful, tech-savvy, and security-conscious parents.

More information can be found at https://www.ask-why.app or directly in the stores:
👉 Apple AppStore https://apps.apple.com/app/id6749770685
👉 Google PlayStore http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=edu.why

About us
Thorsten Heilmann is an experienced software developer who turns his ideas into creative and practical apps.
Anja Röbke is a social manager (B.A.) contributing her pedagogical expertise.
The company name Looking4Cache comes from their first project - a geocaching app that already transformed modern technology into fun for young and old alike.
A renaming to LebensWert is planned to emphasise our focus on mindful and responsible projects.

The origin of the idea
The idea for Why?! was born in an everyday moment - on a car journey.
Thorsten and our six-year-old son were travelling when Thorsten was talking to an AI through a new voice interface.
When the conversation ended, our son curiously asked if he could also ask a question - for instance, "Do insects have bones?"
The communication was so awkward that Thorsten had to translate both the questions and the not-always-child-friendly answers.
In that moment, the idea was born: to develop a safe, child-friendly app through which children can ask their own questions and discover answers - simple, clear, and at eye level.

The AI Technology Behind Why?!

Why?! relies on a thoughtfully designed combination of modern open-weight models running on our own server infrastructure in Europe, along with LLM services from OpenAI.

For speech-to-text recognition, Why?! uses the open-weight model Whisper-1 (openai/whisper-large-v3-turbo), which runs entirely on our own servers. Children's speech presents unique challenges: an intelligent audio pipeline preprocesses the recordings to ensure precise transcription, even with lively children's speech.

Question answering is handled by GPT-5 from OpenAI via the new Responses API with Structured Outputs. At its core is a multi-stage prompt engineering system with over 1,000 words that combines age adaptations, safety protocols, topic categorisation, and multilingual recognition. This creates pedagogically valuable and age-appropriate answers.

For speech synthesis, Why?! uses the open-source project Kokoro-82M (hexgrad/Kokoro-82M) in most languages, which is also self-hosted. For German and French, we currently use a service from Google.

By using open-weight models on our own infrastructure, we maintain control over quality, latency, and most importantly, data privacy. No voice recordings leave our European servers.

Looking4Cache UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
Thorsten Heilmann & Anja Röbke
presse@lebenswert.earth
Oberer Wasen 12
DE 74626 Bretzfeld

Looking4Cache UG was founded in 2012 by Thorsten Heilmann. The company name comes from its first project - a geocaching app that turned technology into fun for young and old alike. When Anja and Thorsten became partners, they came up with the idea of realising their visions together. Since then, they have been designing new projects together.

Thorsten Heilmann is an experienced software developer who transforms his visions into creative and practical apps. Anja Röbke is a social manager (B.A.) and contributes her educational expertise. As life partners and parents of three children, they know the daily questions children ask - and the challenges parents face in the digital age - from their own experience. This everyday experience flows directly into their projects.

The planned name change to LebensWert (a play on words combining Leben, meaning life, and Wert, meaning value) underlines the shift in focus: technology should not only work, but also create real added value and be used responsibly. With Why?!, they are doing just that - creating a safe AI learning environment that encourages children's natural curiosity while giving parents control.

This release was published on openPR.