Some American grandparents are enthusiastic about putting their grandchildren in AI-generated children's books, but this has greatly angered the children's parents and even caused family conflicts.
According to a report by Wired on July 29 local time, many parents across the United States have recently received AI children's books from their children's grandparents. The grandparents originally only wanted to prepare a personalized gift for their grandchildren, but the result often backfired.
From the grandparents' perspective, using AI to make a picture book starring their grandchildren is “novel and adorable.” The children's parents may not agree, especially when they cannot accept handing over their children's photos and identifying information to AI platforms for processing.
One parent vented in a Reddit post. Although they had clearly objected many times, their mother still would not stop. “I have said countless times that I do not support AI-generated art, and I have also drawn a clear line: Absolutely none of our photos may be entered into AI, and information that could identify us must not be used in any way. But she still wrote stories based on her experiences with my child, designed the characters to look a lot like my child, and even used our family members' names, making the characters represent us so that my child could ‘see their own family in the story.’”
A business centered on AI-personalized children's books has also emerged. Platforms such as Imagitime, StoryWonderBook, and Childbook.ai have made the production process extremely simple: users only need to provide information about a child, and the child can be inserted directly into an AI-generated story.
However, children do not seem particularly interested in the “custom stories” they receive. A father of 7-year-old and 3-year-old children told Wired that the AI-personalized children's books given by relatives only made both children feel “bored.” “The story was long and rambling. After reading it only once, both of my children said, ‘Okay, let's read Little Blue Truck instead.’”
Note: Little Blue Truck is a bestselling children's book series created by Alice Schertle.
Xu Daozhi (transliterated), a researcher at Macquarie University, once conducted a dedicated analysis of the “AI children's book craze.” In her view, children's lukewarm response to AI children's books is not surprising. “Children will not fall in love with a children's book simply because their name or likeness appears in the story. What truly attracts children is a story that is interesting in its own right. Compared with children's books created by human authors, AI-generated children's books often lack humor, memorable characters, and the dramatic tension that drives the story forward.”
More concerning than dull content is the potential misuse of children's privacy. Xu Daozhi pointed out that there is a lack of transparency regarding how AI platforms use and store ‘children's photos’; the photos may be shared with third parties or used to train AI models.