By Megan Sayles
AFRO Staff Writer
msayles@afro.com
Husband and wife team K.C. and Jayne Hopson are the creators behind ZingFrog.ai, a technology that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to transform written content into concise audio summaries called, “zings.”
The duo founded the company in 2023. For them, “zings” were not just a solution to the rising demand for easily digestible, short-form content, they were an opportunity to reach people who experience literacy and accessibility challenges.
“People are given these big brochures that nobody is going to read—let alone people with reading challenges,” said K.C. Hopson. “I had the idea to summarize it, but I knew we had to make it accessible.”
According to the National Literacy Institute, 21 percent of U.S. adults were illiterate in 2024, and more than half of adults read below a sixth-grade level. Globally, the U.S. ranks 36th in literacy.
Jayne Hopson, a long-time health and education columnist, became familiar with the magnitude of literacy challenges while participating in a health care writing fellowship. In speaking with providers, she heard time and time again that people could not read their prescriptions.
“Those of us who can read make the assumption that everybody can read. We treat people who can’t read like, ‘Well, everybody can read,’ and we don’t really accommodate them at all,” she said. “It also becomes something that people are ashamed about.”
She said the realization hit her like a ton of bricks, and she decided to make her husband aware of the persistent problem. K.C. Hopson had spent his career in technology and had recently sold his software company to a private equity firm out of Silicon Valley in 2021. He had long taken an interest in AI and thought they could use it to address illiteracy, as well as vision difficulties.
Subsequently, the concept for ZingFrog.ai was born.
One priority for the Hopsons in designing ZingFrog.ai was ensuring the platform offered a range of diverse voices for users to choose from. Through research, K.C. Hopson was able to locate a proprietary tool that would help them achieve this.
“We took that tool, and we were able to merge it with ChatGPT to summarize information,” said K.C. Hopson. “We were able to create ‘zings.’”
Through ZingFrog.ai, users have the ability to choose from nearly two dozen diverse avatars to narrate their zings. The platform converts lengthy articles and blog posts into an audio clip and text summary that can be listened to or read in less than a minute. It also has an automation tool, which can automatically generate zings as content is published. In the next two years, K.C. Hopson said he believes ZingFrog.ai will expand to create short videos too.
The first zing launched on the website of The Baltimore Times, Jayne Hopson’s former workplace, in December 2023. In June 2024, the Hopsons unveiled their product at the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s summer convention.
Since then, they have collected analytics from the platform.
“What we were finding is that 25 to 30 percent of people were spending time with the text-to-audio summary, or the zing,” said K.C. Hopson. “Then, strangely enough, what would happen is people would go back to the article for a while and then return to the summary.”
The Hopsons surmised that this indicates that people listen or read the summary for the key points and then head to the full-length post for specific details they are interested in.
The current challenge for ZingFrog.ai is raising awareness about the platform. As K.C. Hopson put it, people can’t want what they don’t know about.
“I’m hoping we can get some breakthrough clients and that people will see that this is actually useful,” said K.C. Hopson. “Our analytics show that this is something people want. Now, we’re just in a stage where we have to educate people to tell them that.”
Though the couple has been able to support media outlets in engaging more audiences with ZingFrog.ai, they remain committed to finding a way for health organizations to use the tool.
“It’s hard enough being healthy,” said Jayne Hopson. “But, it’s really awful when people’s health is affected by things that they have the capacity to change if they are accommodated and people give it a more thoughtful approach.”
The concept would be called “ZingFrogMed,” but complying with HIPPA has proven to be an obstacle. As families continue to play a larger role in the care of their loved ones, bringing their platform to medical providers or even pharmaceutical companies is a chief objective for the Hopsons.
“Every year, more care is shifted from the provider to the caregiver and sometimes, those people are illiterate as well or they’re really young. There are kids who give ‘Pop-Pop’ his medicine when they come home from school,” said Jayne Hopson. “Maybe they can read or maybe they can’t, but the idea is that everybody could listen to a summary of directions on how to take medication.”
As they continue to communicate with health care providers about their technology, the duo is also preparing to launch ZingCaster. The tool will help companies write feature stories and blog posts. It will also be able to generate images and social media posts.
In a world where having an online presence is crucial to companies’ success, K.C. Hopson envisions it as a resource for small businesses that don’t have the manpower to create digital content.
“This tool suggests what to write, writes it, posts it and puts it on social media. It’s one of those things that democratizes technology,” said K.C. Hopson. “All of a sudden, these one- or two-person shops will actually be able to have a strong marketing presence without spending a bunch of money or developing the expertise.”
This story is part of the Digital Equity Local Voices Fellowship lab. The lab initiative is made possible with support from Comcast NBC Universal.
