This week we’ve been preparing the French materials for the next wave of school trials.
In English, we deliberately teach children to talk about AI as “it”. It is not alive. It is not a person. It can sound caring, but it does not care like a person.

In French, however, "l'IA" is grammatically feminine. That matters. When a tool already speaks fluently, warmly, and responsively, a feminine grammatical gender can make it easier — almost natural — for children to begin treating it as a person. Language quietly shapes perception.

That distinction may feel small. But for children building their first mental models of AI, it is worth addressing directly. AI fluency is not just about what children learn to do with AI. It is also about how they learn to understand what AI is — and what it is not.