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Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

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Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#361

Post by JoeOfTexas »

the_af wrote: post #221

As 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 eno…

Master writers like Tolkien don't need ChatGPT to help write.

Amateurs, however, do need the help. Not everyone is a born story teller, but if you have a story to tell and need help telling it, ChatGPT can fill in those gaps for you.

It might not be a work of art like LOTR, but you'll most likely just be getting tips and hints on how to format better.

Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#362

Post by MrOwnPut »

yamtaddle wrote: post #342
flanbiscuit wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The true measure is will a very young child notice and/or care. My guess is they won't and they'll like the story. Only the adults reading it will notice something off/weird/"uncanny" about it. But of course, it's the adults buying/distributing these books so you still need to "sell" it to them first.

Kids happily get sucked into Minecraft video narrative "series" with totally insane plots that make no sense and are basically gibberish even line-to-line, and into dirt-cheap Asian and Eastern European CG cartoon imports on Netflix that are barely better. I'm 100% sure a mostly-AI creative process could produce something higher quality than those... um, genres , I guess, today. (seriously, there's some so-cheap-I'm-…

Kids are like sponges, and pretty much like training an AI.

Trash in, trash out.

Just because there is a bunch of trash on Netflix and elsewhere doesn't mean we should pollute the kid's world more with it.

Especially at the age of reading. 1-5 is the most important age by far...

Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#363

Post by leesec »

thedorkknight wrote: post #340
leesec wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A fun experiment but LLM generated stories will never escape the uncanny valley, because they're not novel, they're remixes. I don't know how we get this myth to stop perpetuating but it does not ring true to me at all. LLM's has proven to have "novelty" many times now.

Anecdotally I've pushed chatGPT pretty hard to give me novel stuff and have found it really hard to do. Sometimes it even gets "grumpy" at me about pushing it.

ChatGPT is specifically trained to play inside the lines, have you tried the same with GPT3?

Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#364

Post by the_af »

JoeOfTexas wrote: post #361
the_af wrote: post #221

As 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 eno…

Master writers like Tolkien don't need ChatGPT to help write. Amateurs, however, do need the help. Not everyone is a born story teller, but if you have a story to tell and need help telling it, ChatGPT can fill in those gaps for you. It might not be a work of art like LOTR, but you'll most likely just be getting tips and hints on how to format better.

Nobody needs ChatGPT to help write.

Most writers learn by writing. This is a "solved" problem, in the sense that mankind has had writers -- successful and otherwise, good and bad -- for hundreds of years now. We got this, this isn't an activity that needs improving by AI tools. It's not an actual problem that humans have, e.g. "I would write better, if only I had an AI assistant!". Creative writing is also not about speed, it's not something that needs optimizing for that. For art in general, actually: "if only Picasso could paint faster!" is not an actual problem mankind has.

I'm talking about creative writing, mind you. Not some technical writing like creating manuals or reports -- I'm all for AI helping us with those.

Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#365

Post by yamtaddle »

MrOwnPut wrote: post #362
yamtaddle wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids happily get sucked into Minecraft video narrative "series" with totally insane plots that make no sense and are basically gibberish even line-to-line, and into dirt-cheap Asian and Eastern European CG cartoon imports on Netflix that are barely better. I'm 100% sure a mostly-AI creative process could produce something higher quality than those... um, genres , I guess, today. (seriously, there's some so-cheap-I'm-…

Kids are like sponges, and pretty much like training an AI. Trash in, trash out. Just because there is a bunch of trash on Netflix and elsewhere doesn't mean we should pollute the kid's world more with it. Especially at the age of reading. 1-5 is the most important age by far...

Oh, I'm not claiming that content's good for them, I'm reinforcing the notion that it won't be kids who reject crappy AI stories on account of their being crappy. Adults might—and should, if the stories are indeed crappy. Kids will binge content that's truly already on par with or worse than what current AI can accomplish, if you let them.

Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#366

Post by SamPatt »

the_af wrote: post #354
yamtaddle wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm starting to worry that we're going to run pretty short of activities humans find fulfilling to do, that have any notable amount of extrinsic reward or value. What happens when the computer does tell better stories to your kids than you do? When you turn the computer loose on them for a week and, well, god damn , by the end of the week they seem to have taken exactly the lessons they needed and are bringing them u…

Everything you mentioned worries me. > What happens when the computer does tell better stories to your kids than you do? Others have answered "but ChatGPT will never get as good at this". Let's, for the sake of argument, suppose that it does: suppose ChatGPT does get better. What then? Why is it a net win for mankind that a computer program can tell better (or "good enough") stories? If mechanical tasks get done by m…

What's left for us is whatever we want to do.

People still do all kinds of things which machines and computers can do better than we can. No reason to think that will change.

Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#367

Post by thewebcount »

Others 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.

Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#368

Post by yamtaddle »

SamPatt wrote: post #366
the_af wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you mentioned worries me. > What happens when the computer does tell better stories to your kids than you do? Others have answered "but ChatGPT will never get as good at this". Let's, for the sake of argument, suppose that it does: suppose ChatGPT does get better. What then? Why is it a net win for mankind that a computer program can tell better (or "good enough") stories? If mechanical tasks get done by m…

What's left for us is whatever we want to do. People still do all kinds of things which machines and computers can do better than we can. No reason to think that will change.

That's exactly my point about the extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation. Of course we can still do whatever we want, we can just no longer count even as much as we can now (which is already much reduced by e.g. recording and broadcast or mass manufacturing) on anyone else caring about it, needing it, or wanting it. I think being able to feel like one's work and creativity are genuinely wanted and needed by others in one's family, friend circle, and community is probably pretty psychologically important to people. It looks like all that's going to be left of that is some very-forced variety, and even that, not to most people—the organic need and desire for other people's creativity and effort may soon be sharply reduced, even further.

Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#369

Post by akdarrah »

newswasboring wrote: post #165
linusekenstam wrote: post #144

Hello Daniel! We've been working on a platform/tool for this since September. And it's live in Alpha right now, 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 inser…

Did 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.

I would be interested in this too. This would be a really cool gift for my newborn daughter.
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