Another creative AI tool to save us time and effort on another day and protect us from the ordeal of having to interact with our children. Google’s latest trick is the Gemini AI Storybook Generator. The tech giant hopes it will help parents fall asleep at night.
Provide a text prompt to Gemini Chatbot and you will create a 10-page storybook with ART. But does the AI-generated combination of text and images provide sweet dreams or lead to dystopian nightmares? I had to give it a try.
The Gemini AI Storybook tool was launched today within Google’s AI bot for desktop and mobile. If necessary, you can request a specific art style and enter your story ideas. You also have the option to upload your own images and documents as references. In a few seconds, Gemini can generate a storybook and even read it aloud, so it’s not necessary.
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According to Google, the advantage of the experiment is personalization, except that it provides a potentially endless supply of bedtime stories for free in over 45 languages. You can generate stories about what happened during the day to enhance your personal memories and lessons. Examples provided by Google include generating stories to reassure children who are afraid to stay at their grandma’s home.
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I tested it with three requests: a friendly tree ghost to calm children scared of shadows, a story that teaches children that bees are beneficial, and a story that teaches children that rare yellow cardinals should not be held as pets. In both cases, Gemini produced some meaningful story and stuck to the prompts in the almost art style I wanted.
On the downside, the story was rather flat and soulless. Characters often feel impersonal (“the woman explained to the little boy who was with her” – who is this woman and who is this random boy who is with her?). And language is stereotypical, repeatedly using adjectives and trivial similes as annoyance.
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What’s even more problematic was the inconsistency in the generated images. Characters may appear different from scene to scene. Otherwise, the action will not match the text. Or simply not there. The boy from My Ghost Story is randomly missing from his bed in one scene. In the other, the ghost of the story now appears to have become a shadow of himself, not a shadow of a tree.
In Google’s own video promoting the Gemini Storybook, the woman appears to be using a wrench as a hammer (see video under 18 seconds).
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I thought it might be good if you could use a bot to upload your own drawings and generate a storybook based on the same art style. It could be fun to turn children’s own photographs into stories. But see what it did in my sketch of Oliver, a South American big-horned owl! It’s a very downgrade, I’m sure you agree.
But perhaps the biggest problem with AI storybooks is that Google understands the key points of reading at bedtime. This is a chore that you need to deal with as soon as possible.
Part of the fun of Bedtime Reading for kids is discovering unexpected stories and art style books that capture the imagination. When that happens, the kids want to see and hear them over and over again. Such stories are universal and can gain sentimental value despite not being custom made.
This allows children to share stories and become part of a collective consciousness, and teaches the children that the world is not fully unfolding. Should we customize our children’s education and entertainment to be the star of every story they read, see and see? Like other AI products like Showrunner, the supposed “Netflix of AI,” it appears to be heading towards atomized cultures that have no experience shared.
The fact that Gemini can read books for you suggests its purpose. Parents enter the prompt, hand over the iPad, and leave the child to the child. But when you don’t know what hallucinations a model might come up with, do you risk giving a child an AI-generated story? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
