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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

#221

Post by the_af »

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 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.

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

#223

Post by Jataman606 »

newswasboring wrote: post #166
makoto12 wrote: post #141

I hate this so very much. Automating creativity is so gross. Never mind the fact that these models are trained on stolen artwork and texts.

All advances in creative tooling are automating creativity. What are you on about? Look at photoshop color selector automates mixing paint, digital filters for audio automate analog mixers. This attitude towards AI creative tools is gatekeeping.

What is wrong with gatekeeping? It's not like everyone needs to be able to make art. Also, i don't know much about Photoshop, but most digitatl filters usually act the same as analog mixers. They do not automate anything.

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

#224

Post by theden »

driscoll42 wrote: post #206
theden wrote: post #194

I 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 g…

Really? 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.

Yeah 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.

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

#225

Post by jkepler »

pharke wrote: post #187
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well 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?

I'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…

Yes, indeed! Children have a huge capacity for stories that engage their imaginations, creativity, and open sense of wonder. And, I think if we're honest, kids are often more honest critics than adults.

Author of "A Wrinkle in Time" Madeleine L'Engle said, "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."

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

#226

Post by dinkumthinkum »

grugagag wrote: post #209
makoto12 wrote: post #141

I hate this so very much. Automating creativity is so gross. Never mind the fact that these models are trained on stolen artwork and texts.

Did we really NEED automation for writing kids books? And for whoever is saying not automating these is gatekeeping let me ask you gatekeeping from what? You could write a kids book yourself without AI if you put your mind to it. It’s a super easy feat. Can we strive to automate more boring stuff such as scrum meetings, filling out forms and paperwork in general?

This “gatekeeping” accusation is so stupid. It’s a laughable conclusion of the current woke/victimization culture. I have seen people on HN refer to the idea of needing sone kind skill to do something creative/difficult as “ableist”.

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

#227

Post by KennyFromIT »

I 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.

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

#228

Post by throwaway4aday »

izacus wrote: post #88
nstart wrote: post #21

There 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 entirel…

I fully expect that any kind of content store (Amazon books, podcasts, audio books, newspapers, news sites, social media) will be absolutely overrun with generated word soup trying to scam people out of a few bucks - e.g. just like YouTube is overrun with autogenerated creepy children videos. Whether having to sift through massive amount of trash to get anything created with some quality is a good or a bad thing... d…

There'll be a lot of low effort stuff but there's also going to be a torrent of good work done with it. A lot of people seem to be missing the developments in these tools that allow you to take the initial result and then shape it through further prompts or by running it through other tools. If you're willing to put the work in to guide and polish the result you can produce some pretty good work with much less effort than it would normally take.

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

#229

Post by grugagag »

ido wrote: post #169
zerop wrote: post #116

Though 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.

What is the outcome of consuming AI work?

Humans get pushed out of the trade or they too start using click to generate content. That generally lowers the bar in quality.

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

#230

Post by dinkumthinkum »

robertlagrant wrote: post #146
makoto12 wrote: post #141

I hate this so very much. Automating creativity is so gross. Never mind the fact that these models are trained on stolen artwork and texts.

If a person learns how to paint expertly by looking at (and even copying, stroke for stroke) paintings, would you consider that immoral, and those paintings having been stolen? If not, what would you say the difference is?

This is kind of a tired reasoning. I don’t know what the goal of this kind of reasoning is. The fact is that virtually no one learns or dies art this way. No one in any statistically meaningful amount has a photographic memory and uses such memory to create new art stroke by stroke.
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