Le Monde Features Humy as an Education-First Alternative to Character.AI

Humy.ai , the Stockholm company behind AI historical figures for schools, was featured in Le Monde on October 17, 2026, in a report on chatbots that let people talk with famous figures, real or fictional: «Je demande à Foucault son avis»  (in French, for subscribers).

Le Monde describes most of the sector, from Character.AI to Dippy, Talkie and DeepAI, as recreational. “Some companies, however, have educational ambitions,” it writes (our translation here and below), and its example is Humy’s Hello History. According to the paper, tens of thousands of students use it in middle schools, high schools and universities in North America, Denmark, Singapore and Hong Kong. Hello History is the consumer app Humy launched in December 2022. Its school edition, Humy.ai, followed in 2023 with source archives, assignments and student data privacy agreements.

Students who question George Washington about the War of Independence, the paper noted, rarely miss the chance to ask him about the “six-seven” meme or Taylor Swift. Stanislav Shakirov, co-founder and CEO of Humy.ai, told Le Monde the company has seen “strong demand for this kind of service from history and social studies teachers,” who have struggled to engage students and get them to read since the Covid-19 pandemic.

The article also quotes cognitive neuroscientist Nadia Guerouaou, who argues that people don’t apply to bots the vigilance they practise with each other, and that chatbot interfaces are “designed to be persuasive.” Humy is built so that students can check what a figure tells them. Figures quote primary sources by pointer, so the AI never writes a quotation itself, and every quote opens the original document. Humy publishes its error rate too: in the August 2026 benchmark, an invented detail appeared in 12.2% of grounded answers, down from 22.6% for the same model without sources.

Le Monde’s report ran days after Character.AI filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing high costs and “potential litigation-related liabilities and regulatory engagement.” Disney has made a $20 million stalking-horse bid for some of its assets, which a higher offer could still beat (TechCrunch ). On Humy, students join without accounts and their data is never used to train AI models. The platform is aligned with FERPA, with data privacy agreements available through TEC SDPA and the SDPC Resource Registry.

Teachers can put their own questions to Humy’s George Washington in the free demo, with no sign-up.

Contact Humy:

• Email: hello@humy.ai