Most AI tools sit in a chat window and wait. You ask, they answer, you go do the thing yourself. That loop gets old fast. ARIA, built by French indie founder Victor Diogo under his company ForGedis, takes a different position: it acts. It opens applications, controls your PC by voice, guides children through homework without handing them answers, and runs HR and accounting tasks for small businesses. One underlying AI, three completely separate products built for completely different people.
What caught my attention wasn’t the ambition of that scope. It was the reasoning behind it. Victor built ARIA starting from a simple observation: useful technology should not be reserved for people with the most money or the most technical confidence. That principle shows up in every pricing decision and every feature choice across all three products.
After getting press access to ARIA Facility, ARIA Kids, and ARIA Industrial for a month, here is what I actually found.
What ARIA Actually Does Across Its Three Products
ARIA Facility: Voice Control for Seniors and People with Disabilities
This is the product that started everything, and it shows in how polished it feels compared to the others. ARIA Facility installs a small agent on a Windows PC and lets a family member control that machine entirely by voice, through their phone. Speak a command, ARIA interprets it, and the computer does the thing. No menus to navigate, no technical steps.
The anti-scam shield is a genuinely useful addition. It analyzes documents and websites before the user interacts with them, which matters enormously for seniors who are disproportionately targeted by phishing. Daily reports go out to a family contact, covering what happened on the machine, whether medications were acknowledged, and any flags worth knowing. No data is stored on ForGedis servers, which is a real differentiator.
ARIA Kids: Guided Learning from Primary School to BTS
ARIA Kids uses something called the Socratic method: it never gives the direct answer. It asks the child questions until they arrive there themselves. This is not a gimmick. It is backed by established learning science, and it is implemented consistently across subjects from primary level all the way to vocational and higher education tracks.
Eight pedagogical techniques run simultaneously, including spaced repetition, active recall, and interleaving across subjects. Parents get weekly reports with progress breakdowns. The platform covers 8 languages and claims availability across 23 countries. For families who cannot afford private tutoring, this fills a real gap.
ARIA Industrial: Role-Based AI for Small Businesses
This one is the most ambitious and the most complex. ARIA Industrial gives each employee access only to their specific job role: HR sees contracts and absences, accounting sees invoices and cash flow, logistics sees stock levels and delivery routes. The director sees everything, consolidated. Seven roles are available out of the box, with custom roles buildable on request.
DGFiP-compatible invoicing, automatic DSN payroll declarations, supplier fraud detection with IBAN checks, real-time stock alerts. For a small French business paying for five separate software subscriptions today, this genuinely consolidates a lot. The pricing scales by headcount, starting at 49 euros per month.
Marguerite at 9am: A Morning That Used to Take an Hour
Marguerite is 74 years old and lives alone in Lyon. Her daughter Sophie set up ARIA Facility on her laptop last month. At 9:15am on a Tuesday, Marguerite wanted to video call her grandchildren in Bordeaux but could not remember where the application was or how to start it. In previous weeks, she would have called Sophie, who would have spent 20 minutes walking her through it by phone, often unsuccessfully.
This time, Marguerite spoke into her phone: “Aria, I want to call my grandchildren.” ARIA Facility identified the video app, opened it, and pulled up the contact. The call connected in under a minute. Sophie received the daily summary that evening, confirming the call happened and noting the morning’s activity. No panic call. No 20-minute troubleshooting session. Marguerite felt independent. Sophie felt at ease. That specific outcome, repeated daily across small tasks, is what makes ARIA Facility more than a novelty.
How ARIA Works Across All Three Environments
Step 1: You Speak or Type Your Request
Each ARIA product accepts natural language input. For Facility, that is primarily voice through a phone companion app. For Kids and Industrial, it is conversational text. No technical phrasing required.
Step 2: ARIA Interprets and Plans
The underlying AI (powered by Claude from Anthropic) analyzes the request, checks permissions and available context, and decides what action to take. For Industrial, this includes checking role permissions before acting. For Kids, it decides which follow-up question will best guide the child toward the answer.
Step 3: ARIA Acts and Confirms
The result is not a block of text explaining what you should do. ARIA either does the thing directly (Facility, Industrial) or guides you through doing it yourself with scaffolded questions (Kids). Confirmation comes back in plain language. The loop is closed without you having to carry it.
ARIA Pricing Breakdown
- ARIA Facility: 12.99 euros per month, 14-day free trial, no card required
- ARIA Kids Solo: 9.99 euros per month, 14-day free trial
- ARIA Kids Family: 14.99 euros per month, 14-day free trial
- ARIA Industrial: from 49 euros per month, priced by headcount, 14-day free trial
All plans are monthly, cancel any time, with no penalty for leaving. Payment is processed through Stripe, and ForGedis never touches your card details.
Who Should Try ARIA First
If you have a parent or grandparent who struggles with their computer, ARIA Facility is worth the two-week trial on its own. If you have a child in school who needs guidance rather than answers handed to them, ARIA Kids is the most principled AI tutor I have tested. If you run a small business drowning in disconnected software, ARIA Industrial deserves a serious look. Start at forgedis.fr and pick the product closest to your situation. The trial costs nothing, and the access takes minutes to set up.
