Is AI destroying the art and magic of children's books?

We learned this week that Amazon is destroying rare books to train AI, but some fear that AI is also destroying the future of literature. There's been a boom in poor-quality AI-generated children's books, and parents and artists are getting increasingly concerned.

On social media, people complain of nonsensical children's literature in shops and libraries, while parents have received AI storybooks featuring their own children as unwanted gifts. In most cases, the books are shoddily made with little thought or respect given to the product or its audience.

Most people have probably come across websites with unreadable AI-written text or AI-generated books offered for sale online, but some people have been shocked to discover bad AI-generated books appearing in print in physical retail outlets.

An illustration student recently shared an image on X of a book she said "ripped her heart out" when she found it in a shop. The text and illustrations appear to have been generated by AI, while truly awful text placement leaves the book's title barely legible on the cover 'design'. And yet a real shop had the book on its shelves.

The post quickly went viral, receiving over 60,000 likes and hundreds of comments, almost all from people who were equally disheartened or had comes across similar AI catastrophes.

"It shows complete disrespect to children's books as a medium. Picture books are not just Notes app poems with random images attached. The artwork in children’s books is integral to how educational and engaging the book is to children," one person wrote.

"This looks horrible," an early childhood educator wrote. "Besides the AI, this book would be horrible for the text alone".

Along with plans for AI-generated children's programming such as Amazon's KPop Demon Hunters mockbuster, these kinds of books suggest that children are seen as an easy market for AI slop, less likely to care or complain about the quality.

But I think even young kids might have an issue with books where the imagery makes no sense, characters change their appearance from one page to the nex,t or where puzzles or drawing tasks are impossible to complete.

Google released a tool for creating AI storybooks last year, and several companies are now marketing AI tools that allow users to upload photos and details about real people to generate a story that can then be ordered in print.

Wired this week reported on cases of family tension flaring due to well-meaning grandparents giving AI-generated books as presents to their grandchildren. It seems the boomer grandparents like the novelty. Parents are often less enthused to learn that their children's names, experiences and photos have been fed into AI tools with murky data transparency policies.

“I have reiterated countless times that I do not support AI-generated art, and drew a hard line that she is absolutely not to feed any of our photos into AI or use our identifying information in any way,” one person wrote on Reddit. “However, she is creating these storylines based on experiences with my kid and modeling her characters to have similar attributes as my kid."

The children apparently aren't impressed either. One dad told Wired his children were “bored” by the books.

Daozhi Xu, a researcher at Macquarie University who published a study into the explosion of such books notes that “children do not love a storybook simply because their name or image appears in the story; they love the book because the story itself is interesting.” AI-generated books often “lack humor, memorable characters, and dramatic tension,” Xu adds.

Generative AI can help us do some things faster and easier. it's natural that some people will take advantage of that to churn out rubbish in the hope that someone might buy it. It's a shame that children are seen as an easy target despite the rich history of beautiful and inspiring children's literature and art.

Hopefully more awareness will mean that parents take the time to check what they're choosing for their kids, while book shops and libraries could also step up quality control.

If children grow up surrounded by poorly written, low‑quality AI‑generated books, it could damage their long‑term relationship with art and literature more than many people appreciate. Children learn about symbolism, nuance, creativity and logic from well‑crafted prose and art. Exposure to clumsy phrasing, incoherent storytelling and generic imagery could stunt linguistic growth and the development of interpretive skills, which could have implications far beyond the book and illustration industries.