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Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney
Two of my friends recently welcomed their first child and I "wrote" a kid's book for them using ChatGPT for the story and Midjourney for illustrations.
The plot was sourced from a group of friends.
- karousah 4y agoما هو فائدة الحليب
- c7b 4y agoGreat job! Did you use any special techniques for getting the same characters in different pictures/settings?
- erklik 4y agoI think that can be done by passing in an image as reference in the prompt.
- SunboX 4y agoYes, you can pass an image (or more) and Midjourney will use it in the picture. You are also able to control the level of "creativity" Midjourney has when creating the image.
- danielcorin 4y agoI used very basic prompts including words like "cute" and "happy" and environment descriptions but not much beyond that (no art style or specific colors of the characters). I felt overall the character consistency has room for improvement but could have been a lot worse. Midjourney's default "style" has a sort of specific flavor to it.
- distances 4y agoOne of the downsides is how the characters look so clearly different in each picture. I don't know if there's any way around that, and might be that kids don't care about such things anyway.
- cloudking 4y agoLooks good! Add a TTS from https://play.ht https://play.ht on there
- echelon 4y agoOr https://fakeyou.com https://fakeyou.com , which has some very good fairytale style voices. Or cartoons your kids would like. We'll be launching a web and real time voice changer soon too, so you can use your own emotion and turn it into another voice. Or make it sing.
- wnscooke 4y agoIt's funny how the fairy ended up with three legs in the final frame. I've noticed AI seems to do that - generates an otherwise fantastic image but with one super odd addition.
- danielcorin 4y agoThe porcupine has two mouths as well. I tried several times to smooth that one out but I could never quite reproduce the same look in the porcupine's eyes so I kept it.
- natch 4y agoUse InvokeAI with inpainting to leave the parts you like untouched and blend in fixes for other parts.
- erklik 4y agoAlmost impossible to generate hands with 5 fingers in Midjourney
- Brajeshwar 4y agoI did something similar for my younger daughter using MagicStory[1] (not mine). I have told her the story quite a few times at her bed time. She has shown it to her teacher and her friends are "jealous." It has her pictures, kinda morphed like a princess and stuff. Edit: Clarifications. 1. https://magicstory.ai https://magicstory.ai
- c7b 4y agoThese look amazing! Did you build MagicStory?
- Brajeshwar 4y agoNope. I think it was a Show HN or something of sort that showed up on my radar.
- thealexshaq 4y agoI did :)
- c7b 4y agoCongrats, looks really amazing! May I ask what your AI stack is? Do you use MidJourney for the images and GPT for the stories or something else? How do you ensure the output stays consistent across images - do you use the seed image and a custom set of prompts for each image, or did you use eg StableDiffusion and did some customized training à la Dreambooth to ensure consistency? Is the workflow fully automated, or are the outputs reviewed and the prompts iterated on manually?
- thealexshaq 4y agoThanks so much! Happy to share our stack: - GPT3 davinci-003 writes the story - we did a lot of manual experimenting w prompts and used that to fine-tune GPT3 which now generates the image prompts for us - Stable Diffusion + Dreambooth generate the images (we train a model on your hero which gets deleted once your story is finished) Right now the workflow is mostly automated, but we still manually approve stories before they get sent out to ensure quality. Unfortunately bc of manual time it takes + GPU costs + super high demand we will probably start offering a paid tier. Hope that helps!
- pertymcpert 4y agoCan tell it was written by ChatGPT. Has that kind of verboseness to it, can't quite put my finger on.
- danielcorin 4y agoI was going for more of a kid's book tone but I think I hadn't quite learned enough about the depth and nuance you can introduce into the output via prompting. In retrospect now, I agree it has that generic-AI tone.
- trmsw 4y agoThe "all sorts of other whimsical attractions" is especially bad.
- danielcorin 4y agoAbsolutely. This was recycled almost directly from some of the prompt material I gave while refining. I've learned more about "prompt engineering" (as it seems to be called) since and think it would be relatively easy to smooth these edges out. Edit: typo
- trmsw 4y agoThis reminded me of the rules for fiction in Flaubert's Parrot. They don't include any mention of whimsy, in fact, but it was fun rereading them.
- c7b 4y agoI find that Midjourney tends to have its own characteristic touch as well. It's great if you like it, but it can be tricky if you want something different. I've found StableDiffusion to be a bit more versatile, even though it's harder to get a similar level of artistic quality.
- Devasta 4y agoBut a kid won't be able to, and if they can they won't be able to articulate whats wrong with it. From the perspective of anyone going into AI, that makes children the perfect target for the mass produced blended garbage that AI generates.
- Lerc 4y agoReminds me of a Milton Jones thing > The first we realised there was something wrong with granddad was when he stripped naked and covered his body in butter. After that he went downhill very quickly.
- echelon 4y agoHow long did this take to put together?
- danielcorin 4y ago~15 minutes with ChatGPT to turn the initial plot into a story with the tone and length I was looking for, an hour or two with Midjourney illustrating and a few more hours for the site from zero to up and running.
- M4v3R 4y agoIt’s obviously not perfect, but it’s pretty darn impressive that AIs can do this now. Something like this was not possible just three years ago. I can’t wait to see what this technology will be capable of in the next few years.
- throwaway675309 4y agoYeah there was a very viral piece of news last month about a guy who did this exact same thing for his kid: https://80.lv/articles/children-s-book-generated-with-chatgpt-midjourney/ https://80.lv/articles/children-s-book-generated-with-chatgp... Though I think the overall response was mixed. EDIT: coincidentally enough, both share a character with the same name, "sparkles". All of these GPT generated plots have the same formulaic tone to them.
- Brajeshwar 4y agoYes, I just checked. The fairy in my daughter's book is also "Sparkles". I believe it uses the same back-end engine.
- TMWNN 4y ago>EDIT: coincidentally enough, both share a character with the same name, "sparkles". All of these GPT generated plots have the same formulaic tone to them. 100% relevant: "Someday" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Someday_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Someday_(short_story)> by Isaac Asimov, 1956
- Moru 4y agoTo be honest I had the same thought 10-15 years ago when I was reading stories to my daughter. It was all written after a template, changing names of places, characters and goals for the story. Many were based on Harry Potter with kids going to magic schools and saving the world. Even a series of them with exactly the same story in each book, just a new goal for each book. The series covered half a shelf at the local library. Daughter quickly got tired of them and we started reading Terry Pratchett instead.
- hnbad 4y agoThere's a huge industry of ghostwriting bad children's books based on what's popular. Zoe Bee did a great video on her experience writing unlicensed Minecraft stories[0]. But the point is that these are basically paying humans to churn out low-quality cookie cutter stories in a time frame and compensation rate that hardly permits for any real creativity. This is an obvious example for something GPT can do well, but that's just automating garbage production. Automating Terry Pratchett on the other hand is impossible without "genuine" creativity: his stories work not just because of the technicalities (a fleshed-out world with consistent rules and characters) but also because he had "something to say". He had personal and political views, experiences and opinions that influenced his work and world building. In essence, works like OP's and the similar ones others have linked here remind me of Hayao Miyazaki's infamous reaction to machine learning driven animation[1]: it's an insult to life itself. It's a soulless approximation of the trappings of art that doesn't understand what it supposedly attempts to capture and can say nothing about it because it doesn't have an opinion on it. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1aqLLiIjgA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1aqLLiIjgA [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EvnKYOuvWo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EvnKYOuvWo (tech demo and reaction starts at 1:25)
- fabmilo 4y agoOh, I like the simplicity of the delivery. I did the same but wanted to publish it on amazon kindle and got lost in the final steps. Maybe I Should just put the website up as you did. Nice graphics, the character consistency is very good, and it is a bit hard to do with standard tools. Bravo.
- s17tnet 4y agoTechnology is far from it yet but when I read about AI generated children's book, my thoughts go immediately to The diamond age's "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer: a Propædeutic Enchiridion".
- nstart 4y agoThere is a market, at least within south east asia, that mass produces stories like aesop's fables, and regional folklore. The books produced are thin 2minute reads and are available for purchase for less than 1 USD usually. It's not surprising to see grammatical and spelling errors slip into the prints of some of these books. The artwork is basic and while stylistically more consistent than OP's effort, it's entirely generic and forgettable (unlike the artworks of legends like Axel Scheffler or Sara Ogilvie). I can foresee a very near future where this market is absolutely overrun with auto generated books + artwork. I don't think of this as a good or bad thing. It's just going to be interesting to see who gets the first jump on this.
- eddsh1994 4y agoMaybe an app for parents to make one with the content they want available as an ebook for x a month
- msikora 4y agoI'm working on something like this
- aliqot 4y agothe Young Women's Illustrated Primer?
- ramesh31 4y agoThis is already happening https://www.pcmag.com/news/amazon-uses-ai-to-generate-animated-childrens-stories https://www.pcmag.com/news/amazon-uses-ai-to-generate-animat...
- nstart 4y agoSeen a few people trying to make these and honestly, it’s ok as a novelty thing. Like for a bday or unique occasion maybe. But using these as any kind of replacement for professionally done work feels like a disservice to children. Good authors+illustrators for children are just so far ahead of any AI generated content right now it’s not even comparable. Something as seemingly simple as Julia Donaldson’s Smartest Giant in Town is a heart warming tale, told along a continuous theme with a consistent voice where the story wraps up beautifully at the end. Then it’s all brought together with delightful illustrations that match and delight so well. They aren’t just good illustrations. They are delightful. Heck. They even have Easter eggs of sorts. All of that gave my son and I so much to discuss, point at, draw, and sing together. Wouldn’t want any child who could have that experience to miss out on it.
- danybittel 4y agoSomewhat related, Yesterday I almost fell for https://youtu.be/I7kW2-4xdN8 https://youtu.be/I7kW2-4xdN8
- throwaway675309 4y agoI hate to be the contrarian voice, but I really don't like where things are headed with these types of assistive tools. I like the idea of using it partially to help complement some effort that you've done yourself, but the idea that you're using both an LLM to produce the story and a diffusion model to produce the pictures makes the entire piece of work almost devoid of individual effort. Using them to produce a private story for your own child is a noble enough effort, but I'm seeing lots of comments on wanting to get these types of things published. With the explosion of these vanity press level dime novel tabloid literary works, it will be that much more difficult to sift out the wheat from the chaff.
- klntsky 4y ago> throwaway675309 Are you afraid of Roko's Basilisk?
- Sai_ 4y agoNo, just Jenny.
- marcell 4y agoCompletely agree. People really don't understand where this is going. It's not like society lacks mediocre mid-brow content as it is. LLM's and diffusion models reduce the cost of production to basically zero, and we now have an endless supply mediocre content. Extend it out a few 10x improvements, and we get an endless stream of so-so Netflix shows produced with zero effort. Basically WALL-E made real.
- piyush_soni 4y agoPeople are ultimately going to do that. And if we really can't figure out a book written by an AI from that written by a human, then what's the point of all of it? Eventually good authors will still succeed as their writing style will not be squeezed out of the grand summation of all the writings in the world.
- 4y ago
- obaid 4y agoAwesome. I built StoryPanda[1] to do something similar. My daughter, and kids of my friends absolutely love creating a story every night. 1. https://storypanda.ai https://storypanda.ai
- richardfeynman 4y agoHey Obaid, I built something similar, https://storybird.ai/ https://storybird.ai/. Want to chat?
- weird-eye-issue 4y agoMe too: https://storykoala.ai/ https://storykoala.ai/
- whatch 4y agoYour https://storynoworky.ai https://storynoworky.ai unfortunately :(
- weird-eye-issue 4y agoI just wanted to continue the pattern in the thread :D
- msikora 4y agoThis looks great! What is the text-to-image model that you have used?
- throwaway4good 4y agoChange the font and make the pictures look handdrawn; then I think it works.
- danielcorin 4y agoThis piqued my interest. I might give it a shot, either with this or something new.
- aliqot 4y agoThis is great, you even got a UI that just works without knowing, so that kids can use it too. Good on ya, OP
- habitue 4y agoKids would love the complete U-turn into butter theme park. Good job, I'd say
- _0nel 4y agoBaking bread? More like Breaking Bad
- _0nel 4y agoBaking bread? More like Breaking Bad B-)
- gnicholas 4y agoAre books generated this way copyrightable?
- gardaani 4y agoI have been trying to use GPT-J or GPT-NeoX to create stories, but they all come out very strange. Here's one I generated using https://textsynth.com/playground.html https://textsynth.com/playground.html and a prompt "Once upon a time there was a mouse called Miisa. One day she": "Once upon a time there was a mouse called Miisa. One day she was driving through the woods and she saw a beautiful castle in the middle of nowhere. She didn’t go in but wanted to. Then she saw a door which said “The Secret Passage.” She went inside and met the owner who was the witch of the woods. “I’ve been lonely for a while and would like to live with you” said Miisa. The witch agreed. “But there’s one condition,” she said. “No matter how many times I ask you to do something, you must do it.” Then the witch asked Miisa to put a hat on her, which would make her invisible. Miisa was terrified. But she did it any way. Then the witch asked Miisa to kill a mouse which lives in her home. The witch wanted to have the mouse’s blood. “I can’t do that,” Miisa said. “I hate mice.” “Well,” said the witch. “You can’t kill a living thing. So then you must torture a living thing.” Miisa was getting scared but then a thought came into her head. She asked the witch, “Does this mean that I can torture a mouse?” The witch didn’t say anything, so Miisa said that she didn’t want to do it and started to leave the castle. The witch was so sad that she threw a fireball to stop Miisa. And that was that."
- lethologica 4y agoThat got weird… I feel as though stuff like this is going to make Elsagate look like it was nothing.
- kilgnad 4y agoAnd people say chatGPT is limited and can't generate original content. A lot of claims going around that chatGPT just generates generic content. Well, as weird as this is, it's totally original and creative.
- the_gipsy 4y agoGrammatically correct utter garbage.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sandGorgon 4y agohow did you do it ? what was the prompt sequence, fine tuning, etc ?
- danielcorin 4y agoI have some rough details on how I operated the AI tools here: https://adventure-of-penelope.vercel.app/credits https://adventure-of-penelope.vercel.app/credits. Unfortunately, I've lost the original log of the conversation.
- ilt 4y agoI had ChatGPT write a similar kids story. There are quite a few surprises in it too! (: Once upon a time in a faraway land, there was a king named Maximus. He was a kind and fair ruler, but he was also very demanding. He wanted to make sure that all of the subjects in his kingdom were happy and well taken care of, but he didn't always know how to do that. One day, King Maximus decided to hold a contest to see who could come up with the best idea for improving the lives of the people in his kingdom. He announced the contest to all of the people in the land, and many of them started thinking of ideas right away. One young girl named Emma was struggling to come up with an idea. She didn't know what to do, and she was starting to feel discouraged. Then, a girl dragon named Supreet came to her and said, "Emma, I have an idea for how we can make sure that everyone in the kingdom has enough food to eat. We can divide the food into smaller pieces and give some to each person. This way, everyone will have enough to eat, and there will be no waste." Emma was very impressed with Supreet's idea. She thanked her and said that she would present it to the king. However, she decided to keep Supreet's idea to herself and pretend that it was her own. She didn't want to share the credit or the reward with Supreet. When she went to the castle to present her idea to the king, King Maximus was very impressed. He thanked her and said that he would consider it carefully. He also told her that she had done a very good job of using factors to solve the problem. "Factors are the parts that make up a whole," the king explained. "In this case, the food is the whole, and the smaller pieces are the factors. By dividing the food into smaller pieces, you are using factors to make sure that everyone has enough to eat." Emma was very happy to have won the contest, and she was proud of herself for using factors to come up with a solution to a problem. She didn't tell anyone that the idea was actually Supreet's, and she accepted the reward for herself. However, the king soon found out that Emma had not been truthful about the origin of the idea. He was very disappointed in her and decided to punish her for her dishonesty. He ordered Emma to roam all over the kingdom and teach the concept of factors to all of the children, dogs, and cats. She was to spend the rest of her life traveling from place to place, sharing her knowledge and helping others to understand this important concept. Emma was very sorry for what she had done, and she accepted her punishment. She set out on her journey, traveling from village to village and teaching the concept of factors to anyone who would listen. She met many new people and animals along the way, and she made many new friends. She also learned a lot from the people and animals she met, and she became a much wiser and better person as a result. Despite the challenges and difficulties she faced, Emma remained determined and committed to her task. She continued to teach the concept of factors to all who would listen, and she helped many people and animals to understand and apply this important concept in their own lives. In the end, Emma's hard work and dedication paid off. She became known throughout the kingdom as a great teacher and a wise and kind person. And she lived the rest of her life in peace and happiness, knowing that she had made a positive difference in the lives of others.
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- 2easy 4y agoThis is creepy to say the least, and nonsensical at best. It doesn’t convey any values like children stories usually do.
- gls2ro 4y agoI don't know how to think about this: On one side, it might be nice to create stories that fit a specific want/desire for what a child might need. We might even go for the concept of a segment of one kind of story. On the other hand, I am picky with the stories I read to my child. I see stories I read as education. They transmit some non-conscious cultural things about being human, about handling this reality and the world. For me the books I read to my kid are the future equivalent of people telling stories around the fire to transmit some necessary and vital knowledge thousands of years ago. I believe (without a scientific ) they are shaping both my child how my child sees the world (through words construct and imagination) and my child value system. Of course, I am trying to expose him to various stories and books as I am also not sure what I think is important is actually important for his life. But I am a bit reluctant/skeptical whenever I buy a book launched recently. I am not 100% sure if the author just wrote a story because they want to sell something, and it does not have any other meaning. Don't get me wrong, it is ok to just buy a book because it looks nice, even if it is shallow. But there are so many books that I don't want all the books to be the same.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ivanhoe 4y agoAbsolutely, there's always a moral to a story in any well-known children book. As for trusting the old, well-tested stories more, I agree, we all grew up on them, but they also hold a darker side as many of the classics also hide a lot of subtle old days social and gender stereotypes and references, as well as many hidden sexual allegories that I personally don't really want my kids to buy into - from banal ones like portraying aristocrats as superior, to the really foobar ones with all these passive princesses just sitting and waiting for that one prince charming to come and rescue them. Hats off to the new wave of fairytales (like e.g. Shrek) that are now trying to move away from all these stereotypes.
- krisoft 4y ago> But I am a bit reluctant/skeptical whenever I buy a book launched recently. I am not 100% sure if the author just wrote a story because they want to sell something, and it does not have any other meaning. I understand your concern. But in this case the whole "book" is just a few pages long. You can vet the thing in minutes. It is a lot harder with longer books. I remember vividly an instance from my childhood a case where my mom was reading us a Doctor Dolittle book. I remember it, because in the middle of the book they had a fight with a crocodile who tried to eat the hero, and according to the story they bound the crocodile and gagged it and left it for good. And as a child I felt so sorry for the crocodile who just followed its natural instinct, and now bound and gagged he will surely die a slow and painful death. My mom seeing that this made me upset she turned the page back and decided to improvise a story pretending as if she was reading from the page. In the new revised story they made the crock promise them not to eat them, and then they untied him. And that was a book published half a century before us reading it. So recency is not necessarily a safeguard. Also sometimes the chat you have with your kid about a story is as important as the story itself. For example about this linked one I would ask any kids if they also found it odd that the hedgehog gave up their passion of baking and opened a theme park. That can lead to deep conversations about the purposes of life, or maybe a much shallower but equally delightful one about the fun of theme parks.
- POPOSYS 4y agoSorry, but the story is missing a very important ingredient for a kids book: I can not identify any deeper moral or social or any idea. While stories "just for fun" have of course a right to exist, it is very questionable to fill your kids brain solely with random, empty, meaningless fun stories. Stories for kids are an important part of helping to build a moral compass for the world. Besides "getting rich quick with fun products" I see no value transported in that story. Empty stories will produce empty humans. There is more to a good story than "something happens" and "nice pictures".
- whateveracct 4y agoof course it is empty and has no moral It was made with AI art and AI text. To do so fundamentally treats creativity as a cost center and this is the result.
- weird-eye-issue 4y agoEh, it isn't the AI's fault... This is the plot he used to feed the AI: "Once upon a time there was porcupine. Every day, she baked a loaf of bread. One day the loaf disappeared. Because of that, she had too much butter. Because of that, things got slippery. Until finally she opened the first ever butter theme park." I can bet you that if you specifically asked the AI to include some morals it would do so In fact I'll show you. Input: what are some values that could be included in a children's book with the following plot: Once upon a time there was porcupine. Every day, she baked a loaf of bread. One day the loaf disappeared. Because of that, she had too much butter. Because of that, things got slippery. Until finally she opened the first ever butter theme park. Output: Some values that could be included in a children's book with this plot could include: Perseverance: The porcupine continues to bake bread even after it goes missing, and she uses her excess butter to create something new and exciting. Creativity: The porcupine comes up with the idea for a butter theme park, showing that it's possible to turn a problem into an opportunity. Resourcefulness: The porcupine uses her excess butter to create something new and exciting, rather than letting it go to waste. Entrepreneurship: The porcupine opens the first ever butter theme park, demonstrating the importance of taking initiative and starting one's own business.
- moonchrome 4y agoHow do you get a layer of butter on your kitchen ? Not a native English speaker so maybe this sounds natural to people - but to me it sounds like bad wording. It paints the wrong picture and is not kids friendly wording IMO.
- Jolter 4y agoWhat about it seems “not kids friendly” to you? I don’t see the problem.
- wildrhythms 4y ago'On your kitchen' is not something most English speakers would say; they would say 'in your kitchen'. Otherwise it seems like the butter is 'on top of' the kitchen, like on the roof. And instead of 'your kitchen' it would be 'the kitchen', since the story takes place at the house of the characters in the story and not the reader's house. Also usually children's books are much more descriptive: "Butter went everywhere! On the ceiling, on the floor, on the refrigerator, on the toaster..." And to the point of not being kids friendly, imagine your child has this book read to them, and you find the next day that they've illustratively covered your own kitchen in butter... Most children's stories are written in a way that spells out danger or bad behavior meaningfully.
- moonchrome 4y agoThe wording part is my fault - I didn't think about on vs in, in my mind it would be on the walls and stuff / kitchen is the insides of the room - but I can see how that's maybe not appropriate. The exact quote is : >But then she noticed something even stranger - her kitchen was covered in a thick layer of butter. vs >Butter went everywhere! On the ceiling, on the floor, on the refrigerator, on the toaster Your phrasing sounds like something I'd read to my son and I could see him repeating all the items and adding some of his own.
- moonchrome 4y agoI don't know, I'm imagining reading this to my two year old and using the words like "layer" seems pointlessly complicated. The story seems too silly for a child with better vocabulary. I could be off.
- HeartStrings 4y agoI don’t like it. Synthetic looking and doesn’t hit hard.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- db39 4y agoI did something similar back in early 2021 (that I ended up self-publishing for fun). It turned out ok at best, but it was a pretty fun project - it's now a cool snapshot of AI generation technology of the time. The progress that has been made in text and image generation over the last ~2 years is insane.
- lifeisstillgood 4y agoIs there any feasible way to get midjourney to use the same "character" each time ? The hedgehog and the girl (and the woods) just change - losing some emotional constant across the book. I am "writing" a book about fairies with my seven year old and Inthink I might use midjourney for the background scenes and photoshop in her fairies, but ... yeah chatgpt and midjourney are kinda like twitter / FB - a mirror of our society and it's artifacts.
- eraserj 4y agoIn the coming years, the human values taught in these AI children books will be picked by an AI to fix the most pressing current and foreseen issues in society (eg. individualism, environmentalism). In the following decades, parents might be less relevant in children education, sometimes even harmful.
- CatWChainsaw 4y agoPhones are practically parents already and that's going so great.
- jamessb 4y agoThe prompt [1] didn't fully transfer to the generated story. This is an important part of the prompt: > she had too much butter. Because of that, things got slippery. > Until finally she opened the first ever butter theme park. But the generated story doesn't say that the layer of butter in the kitchen was slippery, or explain that butter in general is slippery (and hence could create "slippery slides"), which make the idea seem like a bizarre jump: > Sparkles was sorry for her mischief, and offered to help Penelope turn the butter back into bread. But Penelope had a better idea. > Together, they opened the first ever butter theme park [1]: https://adventure-of-penelope.vercel.app/credits https://adventure-of-penelope.vercel.app/credits
- thih9 4y agoThen again, “things got slippery” can be used metaphorically; and that meaning did appear in the story (mischievous Sparkles).
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y agoWell it’s a kids book. So I’m not sure it should be heavy on metaphors. It’s really not great though. On the last page the hedgehog becomes huge. And it makes no sense. Why was there too much butter? Why was some random girl in the house. How does butter make bread disappear? Why is one character a hedgehog and the other a human girl?
- pharke 4y agoI'm of the opinion that all kids books should be heavy on metaphor and allegory and all of the other important and joyful aspects of language. Restricting children to books that have been "written at their level" or "made easy to read" is doing them a disservice. It's no wonder so many people grow up to be seldom readers if their first exposure to reading is saccharin pablum that presents no challenge, no meaning, no mystery, and no danger. A proper children's book should be one which an adult can also read and enjoy if they give way to that childlike wonder that still lives within them.
- lucataco 4y agoAll the sites I've seen have weird looking images with Midjourney. I've made a couple of good ones here: https://bedtimestory.live https://bedtimestory.live
- klondike_klive 4y agoWith respect, these examples seem to be summarising the plot of a story rather than actually telling a story.
- jeisc 4y agoDoes anyone here really think that AI will produce a new "Jungle Book" by Kipling or a new "Mona Lisa" by Da Vinci or a new "Requiem" by Mozart" which could even have a remote possibility of becoming cultural icon and reference? And is that a goal or event that the spectators are waiting for? And if it occurs what would it infer about human cultural evolution?
- WA 4y agoYes and no. Famous art is about context, circumstances and marketing. Strip a famous piece of art of its context and it doesn’t have meaning. If you find someone who can put an AI generated piece of art in the right context, it could become the next Mona Lisa. But then, is the AI the artist or the person who uses AI to create context?
- joshka 4y agoMaybe[1]. At least ChatGPT seems to "think" so. I was curious about how ChatGPT would go with creating memes (this era’s main cultural output). > Could the memes generated from this have a remote possibility of becoming cultural icon and reference? And is that a goal or event that the humans are waiting for? And if it occurs what would it infer about human cultural evolution? === It is possible that the memes generated from this image of a robot with a blank, emotionless expression could become a cultural icon and reference, although it is difficult to predict which memes will become popular and enduring cultural phenomena. The goal of creating memes is often to entertain and engage with a particular online community, rather than to become a cultural icon. If a meme generated from this image were to become a cultural icon, it could suggest that humans find the idea of a robot trying to understand human behavior and emotions to be relatable or amusing. It could also indicate that the concept of AI and robots trying to understand human behavior has become a prevalent theme in popular culture. However, it's important to note that memes are a form of digital culture that can be ephemeral and change rapidly, so it's not a certainty that this meme will become a cultural icon or reference, but it could be a possibility. === [1]: https://www.joshka.net/2023/01/chatgpt-memes https://www.joshka.net/2023/01/chatgpt-memes
- spywaregorilla 4y agoDoes anyone here really think artists using computers will be able to create great works? This is really just a dumb question. These are tools, like paintbrushes and paint software. Any idiot can put paint on a canvas. Any idiot can make doodles in GIMP. Any idiot can write a prompt. None of these statements say anything about the upper bound of creative potential for any of these tools. The fact that a creative work could be summoned deterministically from a seed in an embedding space is irrelevant. And no, we shouldn't put old works on a pedestal. Note that your examples are basically all pre-digital. These are not sentient AI. These are tools used by humans. And you can't judge tools' potential by the least competent users, the average user, or even the best users.
- slowhadoken 4y agoYou didn’t really make anything though.
- reyqn 4y agoI hope if you program you always do it in assembly language, otherwise you didn't really make anything.
- slowhadoken 4y agoYou're a bottleneck to understanding.
- debugnik 4y agoWell, they wouldn't claim to assemble it. It's clear to me these people using AI so heavily don't have an authorship role at all, but a publishing one.
- reyqn 4y agoIt's not so clear to me. AI is just a tool you use like any other.
- slowhadoken 4y agoI can't imagine anything is clear to you.
- debugnik 4y agoIn that case are publishers also authors when the artists and writers are (contracted) tools like any other? This is just as rehash of the debate around authorship for prompting a single image. If you had typed the same prompt on Google and picked a picture, or hired an artist with that prompt, you wouldn't claim to be the artist. Therefore you're having a different role than that in the process, ML model or not: publisher, producer, whatever. The sooner these people come to terms with it, the better, so they can promote themselves for the skills they actually have (lackluster as I find them) and leave actual authors to carve their own niches among the incoming flood of generated content.
- zerop 4y agoThough I like AI producing "Human alike" work, but I would like to caution ourselves on consuming everything AI is producing in such use cases. Human creativity should be first preference and avoid to be replaced, based on outcome of consuming AI work.
- meigwilym 4y agoCofounding a startup in the physical space with someone whom you have not only just met, but who's also freely admitted to recklessly destroying your property? Sub optimal.
- Jolter 4y agoAre you in the wrong thread, by any chance?
- seydor 4y agoEvery time the copyright is challenged by a newcomer, we have a revolution for communication. When google and youtube came along and scraped everyone's content with little regard for copyrights, a new world was created. I hope all the lawsuits fall through, so that AI generated content can do the same thing
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- gt565k 4y agoExpecting the “Made by humans” stickers and labeling any day now. As AI generated content becomes mainstream, we’ll see product labeling like we do with organic produce to differentiate the source.
- sebzim4500 4y agoYeah I suspect the "Made by humans" stickers will be abused, just like how car manufacturers spend 20 minutes attaching the wing mirrors in the US and so it's "Made in the USA". I guess the equivalent here would be generating a story with an LLM and then changing the wording a bit.
- oneoff786 4y agoThe term you are looking for is “handcrafted”. This book is still made by humans.
- throwaway4aday 4y agoIt'll be short lived if it is even a thing. Forget bicycles, you're looking at a power loom for the mind. The next industrial revolution is here.
- somishere 4y agoI appreciate the sentiment (I think) but as far as kids books go, this isn't great. Can anyone point in the direction of a great AI-generated kids book?
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- shgidigo 4y agoThe main problem in these things are the lack of persistance. In very image the porcupine is different. Any ideas on how to fix this?
- grugagag 4y agoHire a human
- riffraff 4y agoWe own a few children books which were obviously produced by piecing together random stock images, and they are like this. So, there's a market, and kids won't mind :)
- disbullief 4y ago[flagged]
- chaghalibaghali 4y agoReally interesting (assuming I'm correct about how this comment was created) how distinct ChatGPT's writing style already is to me
- codebolt 4y agoMy youngest son loves the story about the Three Goats Gruff and also the show Blaze And The Monster Machines on Nickelodeon. One of the first things I thought to do with ChatGPT was ask it to write the story of the Three Goats Gruff as an episode of Blaze. The result was pretty impressive, with Blaze and his friends matching off against a troll to race over a bridge to save three goats. Totally plausible plotline for an episode, and most importantly, my son was thoroughly entertained when I read it.
- makoto12 4y agoI hate this so very much. Automating creativity is so gross. Never mind the fact that these models are trained on stolen artwork and texts.
- lfkdev 4y agoIf it works, it'll be used. Are you grossed out when using a calculator? I hope so
- mysterydip 4y agoThe square root of 3.5 is always the same value, so why bother doing it less efficiently? The same is not true for creativity.
- makoto12 4y agoMathematical concepts are in the public domain. The art used to train these models are not
- pixl97 4y agoI mean the concept of public domain is fungible when companies like Disney can pay off their favorite politicians to get 20 more years of monopolies on their ideas that 'steal' from the society they live in. Being that there is enough of a debate on this topic alone that's been raging for decades it's not easily decidable by a one liner.
- makoto12 4y agotrue. Personally I think the concept of public/private domain is a good thing. But like all good things, they get abused by bad actors who are huge corporations. But the artwork and texts used for training these models are often coming from small independent creators. The same creators who will be sidelined by this new technology. Bitter pill to swallow
- robertlagrant 4y ago
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- linusekenstam 4y agoHello Daniel! We've been working on a platform/tool for this since September. And it's live in Alpha right now, https://bedtimestory.ai https://bedtimestory.ai We are working on a lot of feature requests and improvements at the moment, and distribution. Text, Audio and Video being the primary use-cases. Making stories 100% editable and upload your own images is also in the works. We are working on "Magic Images" that will allow you to insert yourself or your kids into the stories as stylised characters in your style of choice https://twitter.com/LinusEkenstam/status/1603536335884750848 https://twitter.com/LinusEkenstam/status/1603536335884750848 We are also working on Magic Talking Cards, Video audio of the story character telling the story from their perspective https://twitter.com/LinusEkenstam/status/1603276364550807552 https://twitter.com/LinusEkenstam/status/1603276364550807552 In our library there are over 10.000 stories https://bedtimestory.ai/library https://bedtimestory.ai/library We are looking for people to keep giving us feedback and help us push the boundaries on whats possible.
- newswasboring 4y agoDid I miss it somewhere or you don't actually make physical copies for these? I would love that; I know the perfect people to gift that subscription to. Let them generate a few stories and maybe once per month select a book to get printed and delivered. This is a genuinely exciting product.
- linusekenstam 4y agoWe are working on print as an option, so you can make a collection and each month you get physical books at your doorstep! Thank you! follow us on twitter to stay up to date, https://twitter.com/bedtimestoryAI https://twitter.com/bedtimestoryAI
- newswasboring 4y agoAlso... Is there a way to gift a subscription? This is the kind of thing new parents usually don't have the time to search for themselves.
- 4y ago
- ykovalenko 4y agoThis is scared me a lot
- HellDunkel 4y agoThis is not a great story and the visuals don’t do much either.
- h99 4y agoThat’s cool. We’re doing generative voice ai. If you’d like to add a narration, reach out to me.
- harshaw 4y agoI keep coming back to the fact that these technologies enable people to create simulacrums of high quality content quickly - but that shows because of the obvious short comings as identified by other posters. If I gave myself a week to write a children's book using these tools with a human editor loop - could I create (or perhaps someone more talented) a great book? That seems possible. This seems like it was created in a couple of hours - and that is slightly interesting - but perhaps we will quickly move beyond the amazement of this as we start to see lots of quickly generated low quality content.
- k__ 4y agoTake all the work of writing a book. Factor out the creative tasks. Focus your work on the creative tasks and let the AI do the rest.
- vlowrian 4y agoWhenever I'm looking for anything on Amazon nowadays, it feels like sifting through hundreds of cheaply made products from companies I've never heard of with 4 or 5 star reviews I have no trust in. I'm really not looking forward to the same thing happening with blog posts, news articles, or books. Not like there is just quality content out there at the moment.
- theden 4y agoI also ain't a big fan of the idea, a few thoughts * (Currently) Most AI generated images have an aesthetic to them, so it's easy to spot sometimes. Typically low-res, smeared details, bad hands/body horror. This may improve over time, but I don't know how I'd feel ethically (both morally and in work/effort) leaning so hard on AI. * For me at least, as soon as I learn something creative is completely (or mostly) AI generated I lose all interest in engaging with the content beyond surface-level consumption. I think fundamentally AI generated creative works are banal and will age horribly over time. Honestly I think it would be much better to buy a nice paperback kid's book made by a human as a gift for your friend's kid. They'll love it and the kid will have a connection with a human author and artist.
- grugagag 4y ago“Room on a broom” is a popular kids book. I wonder if AI could match up to it
- mechagodzilla 4y agoAll of the AI generated stuff reminds me of this: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2016/08/17/infinite-and-infinitesimal https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2016/08/17/infinite-and-i...
- driscoll42 4y agoReally? This may be AI generated to an extent, but it's also showing that the author and friends worked together and put together a labor of fun and love for a pair of friends. That'll have more meaning to that family than a random kid's book.
- theden 4y agoYeah that's nice sentiment but I don't know, kids don't care about that sort of stuff. I'd rather spend a few hours researching paperback kid's books that could positively impact their growth and plant seeds—made by career artists and writers. It's about the kid, not OP and the parents. This is like giving a kid an AI-generated JRPG game you made in an afternoon vs giving them a Final Fantasy game.
- biztos 4y agoIt seems the AI doesn't know the difference between a hedgehog and a porcupine. (A quick check shows Stable Diffusion at least knows the two animals on a high level.) Leaving aside the creepiness factor, I wonder what confusion will be sown in young minds by the inevitable onslaught of machine-generated children's content.
- okamiueru 4y ago> stable diffusion A bit tongue in cheek. But, that would be like saying a pencil knows the difference between them. Which model in particular? 1.5, 2.1?
- electrotype 4y agoWhen will there be a similar tool that allows you to even add a generated video interview with the "author" of the book?
- LastTrain 4y agoGoing to liken this to music, because I'm sure AI generated music is coming. Long before AI entered the picture, I realized that the difference between just enjoying and really getting into music was the ability to relate to the artist in some way, and through that a kind of bond in forged. As the tools become more sophisticated and there are more layers between the artist and their output, this connection becomes more tenuous. With AI in the picture it starts to disappear. I don't expect my attitude to change on this, so I doubt when AI generated music comes along I'm going to be able to enjoy it more than casually. [Edit: a word]
- the_af 4y agoAs an experiment, this is cool. As actual usage? I enjoy making stories up (or misremembering existing ones) for my daughter. The human touch is valuable to me. I also wonder: many well-loved stories of today started as a story the writer was telling his/her children; one example is The Hobbit. What if Tolkien had thought "screw this, I'm overworked and tired, I'll just type some prompt for ChatGPT and it will be enough for Christopher". I know mine is a kneejerk reaction. But I can't help thinking that this is solving a problem no actual humans have. We know how to tell stories, good or bad. We don't need automation for this. We don't need help writing terribly bland and generic stories, either. So it feels vaguely dystopian to me. Technically it is impressive. ChatGPT and things like it are the most impressive thing in years, to me.
- iambateman 4y agoYea I’m with you. If a children’s story is primarily a generic - albeit engaging - plot, then I think AI will be very successful at telling new stories. But as a means of cultural encoding to help children understand what matters in the world and how they - specifically - fit into that world, it’s going to come up short.
- turzmo 4y agoI think this is true, but there are (likely) more children's books out there than you can read in a lifetime, so it seems like adding more middling AI ones to the mix would not be a value-add. At least (skilled) human authors adding to the pile have a better chance to make the story meaningful. Maybe we need a critic AI that can identify the most touching, meaningful, instructive, and morally enlightening stories out there and help us sort through the already daunting number of options
- MattGaiser 4y agoI can see the usage being between parent and kid more than producing best sellers. Or a way to give a kid a cheap but special gift.
- the_af 4y ago
- KennyFromIT 4y agoI wrote a few children's books when these tools first came out, but ultimately I decided against publishing them due to ethical concerns. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but something felt dirty with the act of publishing and profiting off this work as my own. That said, it was a very fun exercise and I look forward to the stories that are created in the future where the authors don't have the same hang up I did. Even if you don't publish, I would recommend going through the creation process at least once to familiarize yourself with how simple it actually is (tedious, but simple) to create this type of work.
- AvAn12 4y agoIt's almost like the "I" should be in quotes. Because if anyone else in the world gave ChatGPT the same prompts, they would get more-or-less the same story. (visual generative AI is different). I think this makes things like college essay generation less scary. If two students prompt ChatGPT with "write a personal statement for the common application for college" or whatever, ChatGPT will more-or-less produce the same generic statement, with minor variations. It can not personalize for each student because it doesn't know anything about either student. Prompt engineering? Ok sure, but by the time I have written a prompt that is comprehensive enough to make an essay that describes me, I've basically written the essay myself. So anyway, I imagine people will try to copyright output from generative AI responses - interesting question about "who" produced that output.
- danielbln 4y agoJust paste it some excerpt from a previous essay of yours and ask it to write the new essay in that style. There, prompt engineered.
- teolandon 4y agoYou could say the same about a person performing a piano piece. Anyone who presses the same keys in the same sequence would get more-or-less the same performance.
- throwaway675309 4y agoAn absurd analogy by somebody who obviously doesn't play the piano. To get to that point, one has to spend a painstaking amount of time perfecting their craft and improving their virtuosity on the instrument, not to mention that everyone adds in their own interpretation and dynamics to a piece. I can sit down on my Kawai and rattle off the maple leaf rag by Scott Joplin without too much issue, i'm happy to hand John Q. Public the sheet music, but there ain't no way they're playing it.
- geenat 4y agoI find it crazy how many people in here still believe these AI's are producing totally original works- the main source images are all ripped from art station and the like. Midjourney is painfully obvious in its use of the same limited set of source images- with filters, transforms, compositor routines applied.
- danielbln 4y agoWhat does a "totally original work" look like to you? And what does it produce if it's not original? Remixes? Plagiarism?
- monkeydust 4y agoIts technically impressive but miles away from the story telling power of say Julia Donaldson and I think that's a good thing.
- laurentlb 4y agoI also created a kid's book for Christmas; but I still haven't written any blog post about it. What I did: - I asked each of my 5 nieces/nephews to give ideas (e.g. invent a character) - I generated around 10 stories with ChatGPT, based on their input. I used ChatGPT in French, it worked almost as well as in English (except for poetry). - I got a total of 4500 words. This took at lot of iteration with ChatGPT, because I gave guidance and I used lots of followup prompts to force ChatGPT to add more details to the stories. - I generated 2/3 images per story, plus book cover. - I paid for a professional print of the book - 24 pages, around 20 euros - In total, I spent around 15-20 hours of work (content generation took a lot of iterations). That was a nice Christmas gift.
- weeksie 4y agoA fun experiment but LLM generated stories will never escape the uncanny valley, because they're not novel, they're remixes. I know the critique of that position is "but humans just remix the things they know from the world" but that is the same misunderstanding that those who thought truck driving jobs would be automated by 2018 made about that profession. i.e. The less you know about a field, the more likely you are to believe it will be easy to automate. Art, in this case illustration and narrative, requires a coherent viewpoint. In literature this is often referred to as the authorial voice. Voice is special because of the uniqueness of the human life behind it, which I realize sounds a bit airy-fairy, but is very true once you start digging into what works and what doesn't. When you read something and wonder why it's so engaging when it's not _that_ much different than other very similar pieces, that's often what's at work. It's also why some pieces really don't work for some people. The "a kid could draw that" critiques of various modernism styles come from this place. I don't begrudge people experimenting with art through LLM generation, and perhaps it can be a great tool for scaffolding ideas, I grant that. However, I do worry about the deluge of poorly conceived LLM content that will make the good stuff harder to find. We had a glorious age where the gatekeepers had lost most of their power. With the flood of content about to be released, I'm afraid we'll find ourselves beholden to them once again.
- laurentlb 4y ago> they're not novel, they're remixes. I think it depends on how you use it. If you write a one-line prompt, you'll get a "generic" result. With more guidance, you can get something much more personal. For example, you could imagine a story and let ChatGPT pick the actual words. At the end, you can put an arbitrary amount of work to get a generated story. You can treat ChatGPT as a co-author who will help you do the parts you want (e.g. find ideas, find text structure, write the actual sentences). The end result depends on how much work you want to do yourself.
- jcims 4y agoThis is very achievable by layering it. Start by asking for a synopsis, then characters, then story arc, then outline, then chapters, then chapter outlines, then content. Each time seeding the prompt with the hierarchy of content above that level.
- ulizzle 4y agoWould I pay $15-20 USD for this book? No. But would I pay $2 for it? I don't know, perhaps just for the tech.
- rchaud 4y agoNice idea, probably not long before people start doing this to self-publish "fiction" to clog up Amazon and Wattpad further. Sidenote: Why does Stable Diffusion/Midjourney/Dall-E all generate animal/cartoon art that looks like a Disney/Pixar ripoff? It's worse than the generic "Corporate Memphis" art style that every company uses for their marketing websites.
- mistrial9 4y agoit is obvious here that computer programmers have elevated chatGPT to the most sensitive grounds of cultural transmission, right away. Since there is a documented and ongoing mental health crisis with young teens and electronic communication, this appears to be adding fuel to the fire of whatever it is that is going on, that is causing real illness on a large scale.
- ulfw 4y agoThe illustrations are beautiful! Well done this whole thing!
- t_minus_2 4y agoMy 9-year old wrote and published a book with dalle-2 and openai playground. Chatgpt was not a thing then. It is quite interesting and powerful to see how these AI complement child's unbounded imagination. I would have to say, childrens imagination has more entrop/perplexity than the AI would come up - At the end GPT was merely putting correct grammar and adding the bulk to the story. Children's imagination is the most undocumented, unexplored frontier of human imagination and I still have hope for humans on this edge of creativity.
- latexr 4y ago> Children's imagination is the undocumented, unexplored frontier of human imagination. Hard disagree. But I won’t repeat Boulet’s points, I’ll just link to the comic¹. The alt text in the images expands further. ¹ https://english.bouletcorp.com/2007/12/11/fuck-peter-pan/ https://english.bouletcorp.com/2007/12/11/fuck-peter-pan/
- samsolomon 4y agoIf anyone's interested in the process for doing something like this, I wrote about generating children's books at the end of last year. The most interesting part was using ChatGPT to target and tweak certain parts of the story and merge them back in. When trying to make edits to a very small part of the story it understood what I wanted extremely well. The most frustrating part was trying to get a consistent character in Midjourney. I tried using identical seeds and parameters. I even used a base image of the character to try and influence it. Nothing worked that well. My solution was to come up with scenes that obscured the main character's face—the ones with him peaking out from under the covers or walking down the street. https://solomon.io/childrens-story-written-illustrated-ai/ https://solomon.io/childrens-story-written-illustrated-ai/
- NicoleJO 4y agoAll plagiarized and non-copyrightable. What a shame.
- agentdrtran 4y agoHow many of these have there been in like the past month? a dozen? two dozen?
- Dowwie 4y agoWhat prompts did you use for the children's book?
- Julesman 4y agoEvidently so did everyone on Tiktok.
- asciimov 4y agoThis kids story is too wordy and the sentence cadence is uneven. I guess this will get better, and soon amazon with be flooded with a bunch of kids books and that is kinda sad.
- whoomp12342 4y agoI couldnt read after "we build the first ever butter theme park"
- rubyist5eva 4y agoCan tell it's AI generated because the "plot" makes absolutely zero sense, lol.
- kkielhofner 4y agoA friend of mine has introduced his first grader to ChatGPT, Dall-E, etc. Now one of his favorite games is "AI" and he lights up in wonder typing the kinds of things at a prompt a first grader would. I don't have kids and wouldn't dare wade into parenting approaches but compared to how most of the kids I've seen interact with technology this (to me) is very promising. Compared to watching endless YouTube videos or even playing Minecraft or whatever it's a lot easier to see how "playing AI" could progress to a genuine interest in technology beyond staring at a tablet.
- thewebcount 4y agoOthers have commented on the aspects of the story and whether we should do this with AI, etc. I'll say that I'm not opposed to the idea, but I think the results were a little weak. I think they could be made better by improving your prompts to the AI. For example, the words say that the butter trail led from the house into the woods, but the illustration doesn't show that. There's one large puddle in the kitchen, and that's it. Another issue is that the oven that Penelope puts the bread into is very different from the oven that she later finds empty. One looks like a wood-burning oven, almost like a fireplace, the other looks like a microwave without a door. (Note the top of the oven in the first image is a curved arch, whereas the second one is a rounded rectangle.) I think this lack of continuity between images is part of what gives the uncanny valley feeling to it. It's like some incoherent dream where neither the story nor setting is the same from scene to scene.
- Balgair 4y agoA Young Lady's Illustrated Primer will be here sooner that I had thought!
- CatWChainsaw 4y agoThis portends nothing encouraging, imo.