Promethean adds on-device AI lesson builder to Explain Everything

Promethean has added a new on-device AI tool to its Explain Everything app, giving teachers on supported Apple mobile devices a way to turn existing slide content into lesson materials without routing that content through a third-party cloud service. The feature, called AI Companion, was publicly announced on September 30, 2026, and Promethean says it can generate lesson plans, quizzes, vocabulary lists, suggested next steps, translations, audio narration, and accessibility descriptions from text, images, or drawings already on a slide. (prometheanworld.com)

For schools, the pitch is less about AI novelty than about procurement friction. Promethean says AI Companion runs entirely on the user’s device, works without an internet connection, and is included at no extra charge for Explain Everything Advanced and Pro users. The public pricing page lists Advanced at $69 a year for an individual user, while school and district pricing is custom. That makes the launch potentially interesting to district tech leaders who are open to teacher-facing AI but wary of adding another vendor review for cloud-based data processing. (prometheanworld.com)

What remains uncertain is adoption. Promethean’s public materials at launch focus on workflow and privacy, not on student outcomes or independent classroom efficacy. The company’s iOS 10.0 release notes show AI Companion was added in the September 17, 2026 app update, but there is not yet public, independent evidence showing how much prep time it saves in day-to-day teaching or how widely districts will permit it.

Built around what is already on the slide

One important detail in the product design is that AI Companion is not positioned as a blank chatbot. According to Promethean’s help documentation, teachers start from an entire slide or from selected objects on the canvas. They can then ask the tool to generate supporting materials and insert the results back into the project. In practice, that makes the feature closer to a repurposing assistant than to an open-ended AI writing box: the teacher first assembles the source material, then asks the app to transform it into a quiz, activity, vocabulary support, translation, audio layer, or other follow-up asset.

That workflow matters in classrooms because it nudges teachers toward bounded use. A tool that starts with a teacher’s own slide deck is easier to audit than one that starts with a blank prompt and a broad request to “make me a lesson.” It also better matches how many teachers actually work: they already have slides, excerpts, diagrams, or handwritten notes, and the time-saving opportunity is often in converting those materials into checks for understanding, multilingual supports, or a narrated version for students who need another mode of access. Promethean’s own help page also warns that AI can make mistakes and that important information should be reviewed for accuracy. (help.explaineverything.com)

The launch also expands a direction Promethean had already started. Last year’s Explain Everything 9.0 update used Apple Intelligence to generate interactive activities such as crosswords, matching, and memory games on iPhones and iPads. AI Companion broadens that from one narrow classroom use case into a fuller lesson-building layer.

Privacy is the pitch; Apple hardware is the gate

Promethean is clearly aiming at the biggest objection many schools still raise about generative AI: where the data goes. The company says AI Companion works offline and that lesson data does not leave the device. That claim fits the way Apple’s Foundation Models framework can be used inside apps, but it is worth reading precisely. Apple’s developer documentation says app makers can tap either on-device models or, for some use cases, Private Cloud Compute. Promethean says this feature uses the on-device route. For district leaders, that is a meaningful difference from tools that send content to remote AI services for processing. It does not eliminate governance work, but it can shrink the scope of the privacy conversation when the source material is teacher-authored content rather than student records. (prometheanworld.com)

The trade-off is reach. Explain Everything itself is available across iPads, iPhones, Chromebooks, Android devices, and the web, according to the company’s pricing materials. AI Companion is not. Promethean’s help page says it requires iPadOS 27 or iOS 27 with Apple Intelligence enabled, and Apple says Apple Intelligence on iPad is limited to the iPad mini with A17 Pro and iPads with M1 chips or later. Apple also says enabling Apple Intelligence can require up to 8 GB or, on some higher-end devices, up to 14 GB of local storage. So the schools most likely to benefit first are iPad-rich environments that already standardize on recent hardware. Chromebook-heavy districts can use Explain Everything, but they cannot use this new AI layer. (help.explaineverything.com)

That hardware filter could make the feature more niche than the headline suggests. Many districts still support a mixed-device environment, and some that own compatible iPads may not want Apple Intelligence enabled systemwide. Even in Apple-forward schools, IT teams will have to think about operating-system readiness, storage headroom, supported languages and regions, and whether their local policies allow AI features to be switched on for staff devices. Apple notes that Apple Intelligence availability varies by language and region. (support.apple.com)

Where this sits in the teacher-AI market

The more direct competitors are not interactive-panel vendors. They are browser-based teacher AI platforms that already promise faster lesson planning and quiz creation. MagicSchool markets free and paid teacher plans plus enterprise oversight, while Brisk offers a free teacher tier and district tiers with admin controls. But those products are designed around cloud services. Brisk’s student data privacy addendum says the service may process student data, including assignment content, and may share that data with AI service providers as necessary to provide the service, though it says providers may not use the data to train their AI models.

That does not make cloud-based tools unusable; it means the implementation question is different. Web-based products tend to win on device reach and ease of access. An individual teacher can often start with a browser and a free account. On-device products can win on data minimization and offline use, but only where the hardware exists. Google is also pushing educator-facing AI through Google Workspace with Gemini, including lesson-plan drafting inside Docs, but those features sit inside Google’s broader Workspace licensing structure rather than inside a dedicated lesson-whiteboard app.

For current Explain Everything users on compatible iPads and iPhones, then, AI Companion looks like a relatively low-friction add-on: no separate AI SKU, no new browser workflow, and a tighter connection between source material and generated output. For schools that are not already paying for Explain Everything, or that mostly run Chromebooks, the launch is less a broad market shift than a signal about where classroom AI may be heading: toward narrower, task-specific tools embedded in software teachers already use, with privacy claims tied to the device rather than just to a vendor contract. (prometheanworld.com)

The next question worth watching is whether Promethean can move this beyond an Apple-only feature and beyond vendor claims. If the company publishes usage data, district case studies, or expands AI Companion to more of Explain Everything’s cross-platform footprint, the story changes from an interesting privacy-first release to a broader test of whether embedded, on-device AI can actually earn a place in everyday lesson prep. (explaineverything.com)