Show HN: Stories for Kids Using AI

#1

Post by niksmac » Sat, Nov 11, 2023, 9:09 AM UTC

Every child deserves a tale that ignites their curiosity, fuels their dreams, and takes them on a journey through the realms of wonder. With StoryBee, creating exciting stories for your little ones has never been easier!

How it Works: https://storybee.app/how-to-generate-stories

Story to Audio: https://storybee.app/ai-story-audio-narration

Why sharing here: To get some constructive feedback from awesome HN community.

Show HN: Stories for Kids Using AI
storybee.app

Re: Show HN: Stories for Kids Using AI

#2

Post by Indoctus » Sat, Nov 11, 2023, 9:21 AM UTC

It wrote a story called the headless horseman that isn't the headless horseman. Seems to suffer from the usual lack of intent that AI art has.

Re: Show HN: Stories for Kids Using AI

#3

Post by niksmac » Sat, Nov 11, 2023, 9:26 AM UTC

Indoctus wrote: post #2

It wrote a story called the headless horseman that isn't the headless horseman. Seems to suffer from the usual lack of intent that AI art has.

Thanks for the enthusiasm. With all due respect, this experiment is not to solve the problem of AI in general, I am hoping this would help parents/teachers to spend quality time with children.

Re: Show HN: Stories for Kids Using AI

#4

Post by Obscurity4340 » Sat, Nov 11, 2023, 1:04 PM UTC

niksmac wrote: post #3

Indoctus wrote: post #2

It wrote a story called the headless horseman that isn't the headless horseman. Seems to suffer from the usual lack of intent that AI art has.

Thanks for the enthusiasm. With all due respect, this experiment is not to solve the problem of AI in general, I am hoping this would help parents/teachers to spend quality time with children.

Can it retain any stories so if the kid wants to hear it again later, that's an option?

Re: Show HN: Stories for Kids Using AI

#5

Post by niksmac » Sat, Nov 11, 2023, 2:50 PM UTC

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #4

niksmac wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the enthusiasm. With all due respect, this experiment is not to solve the problem of AI in general, I am hoping this would help parents/teachers to spend quality time with children.

Can it retain any stories so if the kid wants to hear it again later, that's an option?

Yes. You can create an account and you will get all the stories you generated for you forever.

For now take a look at this one if you will. https://storybee.app/story/the-flowing-blue-river-654f92cb3d...

Re: Show HN: Stories for Kids Using AI

#6

Post by Obscurity4340 » Sat, Nov 11, 2023, 2:57 PM UTC

niksmac wrote: post #5

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can it retain any stories so if the kid wants to hear it again later, that's an option?

Yes. You can create an account and you will get all the stories you generated for you forever. For now take a look at this one if you will. https://storybee.app/story/the-flowing-blue-river-654f92cb3d...

What's the Privacy Policy in non-lawyerly terms ;)

Re: Show HN: Stories for Kids Using AI

#7

Post by niksmac » Sat, Nov 11, 2023, 3:14 PM UTC

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #6

niksmac wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. You can create an account and you will get all the stories you generated for you forever. For now take a look at this one if you will. https://storybee.app/story/the-flowing-blue-river-654f92cb3d...

What's the Privacy Policy in non-lawyerly terms ;)

We want to make things as simple as possible for our users to understand not googlish or facebookish :D

Re: Show HN: Stories for Kids Using AI

#8

Post by MandieD » Sat, Nov 11, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

This looks like a fine toy for children who are old enough to type their own prompts and thus well past the basic language acquisition stage where they’re still repeating a lot of what they hear, but I’m absolutely not going to use it to “write” stories for my three year old, and would advise other parents of preschoolers to not use it for anything beyond idea generation - kids that age need to be exposed to their native language as humans speak and write it. 15 minutes of being read the output of a well-prompted LLM is probably better than 15 minutes watching whatever YouTube Kids just threw their way, but it’s 15 minutes not being read a good book.

I would be angry if my child’s preschool was using it to generate stories to read to them instead of taking the trouble to find appropriate books.

There are already more good children’s books in the world than I’d ever have time to read to my child.

What would be amazing: something that took a prompt, then gave you a list of a few extant books that resemble the prompt in some way.

Re: Show HN: Stories for Kids Using AI

#9

Post by jtbarrett » Sat, Nov 11, 2023, 6:43 PM UTC

I spent some time with my kid trying to get ChatGPT 4 to write bedtime stories. We found that it kept devolving into the pattern of a generic but acceptable setup followed by something like "and then the heroes solved a variety of challenges, learning together and having fun all the way" that completely skips the meat of the story. We also noticed that it was difficult to goad the AI into adding any quotations; the characters rarely _say_ anything.

We only tried StoryBee once but unfortunately got a very similar result; judge for yourself: https://storybee.app/story/the-purple-mystery-654fbfe43da40f....

We did have fun with ChatGPT getting ideas for specific plot turns and generating illustrations (e.g. https://photos.app.goo.gl/coonT1bT7BLRqXeu8).

Re: Show HN: Stories for Kids Using AI

#10

Post by blotato » Sat, Nov 11, 2023, 6:50 PM UTC

This variation is more interesting: use Midjourney/OpenAI to generate a sequence of illustrations and let your child come up with the plot for each illustration. My little cousins LOVE creative games like Dixit because they get to write the story, letting their imaginations run wild, and no 2 stories are ever identical (infinite play).