(Yicai Global) Oct. 30 -- A research center under New Oriental Education & Technology Group, a Chinese provider of private education services, has revealed a series of artificial intelligence initiatives aimed at improving teaching quality and students' abilities.

The institute launched N-Brain League and AI Class Director at a conference yesterday. It has also penned an agreement with GSV Capital and the University of Illinois to build AI labs, and agreed separate cooperation deals with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Automation and the Department of Psychology at Beijing Normal University.

China's progress in developing machine learning is among the world's most rapid and New Oriental has accrued enough data to explore the field of education plus AI, according to Yu Minhong, chairman of the Beijing-based company.

N-Brain is a strategic initiative that aims at building cooperation among AI-related institutions, investors and businesses to explore education plus AI, said Xu Jian, New Oriental's vice president and chief technology officer. The AI Class Director, developed by New Oriental unit BlingABC, will seek to apply the technology to solve teaching issues.

AI Class Director uses face and speech recognition, facial attributes analysis, natural language processing and other AI tech to track each student's class performance in real time, analyze their emotions, participation and results in a quantitative approach, giving advice accordingly, said BlingABC Chief Executive Qiao Lei.

It can also grade and correct a child's pronunciation and generate personalized learning reports based on data, enabling the AI to understand Chinese students' English learning and improve the experience and outcome. AI Class Director can also assess the performance and approaches of foreign teachers, Qiao added.