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AI children's books, body horror edition

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Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#71

Post by muzani »

Gigachad wrote: post #8

I've been wondering what the long term result on peoples perceptions of reality will be after all this AI slop. I've noticed a lot of the times I can spot AI slop videos because they just don't match what I know to be true, I can think "That's an AI video of a fox because I know foxes don't act/move like that" But then the only reason I know that is because I've seen hundreds of videos on the internet before AI gener…

Kids grow up being lied to about everything. Back when I was a kid, my mom would threaten to call Batman if we were misbehaving. Today, there's TikTok videos we "call" where a "policeman" picks up and asks for the details of the misbehaving child.

After 40, people become gullible again. FB is full of people who think an actual Ghibli clip is AI generated.

No offense, but it's these people who can't tell the difference who are most afraid of it.

The kids, lied to all their lives develop a kind of immunity to it. I can easily tell a poorly photoshopped picture, because my brain can recognize inconsistent shading and the repeated background effect when something is erased.

Kids these days will spot AI in 10 seconds. Right now, it's the composition. Even if perfect, AI will enhance it in a certain way and focus from some angles, and there's particular art styles. There's some collector card variants that people hate because it feels AI, even though it's not AI, likely done from tracing/redrawing something AI generated.

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#72

Post by watwut »

NothingAboutAny wrote: post #13
robertclaus wrote: post #2

The lack of real effort bothers me more than the content itself. We can't be bothered to even proofread children's books anymore?

the lack of effort has been the main thing for me since this all started. you give people a tool to do something easier and instead of doing more WITH the tool they do this instead. is anyone out there using AI to make more higher quality children's books than were possible before?

People were not given a tool to do something easier. That is not how it was promoted or sold. And that is not why businesses pay for AI. AI was sold as a tool to replace people and do things on the cheap. A person is attached to it as an accountability sink, that is it.

The way AI got used and integrated makes it hard to produce quality and easy to produce a lot of slop. That was deliberate design and marketing choice.

> is anyone out there using AI to make more higher quality children's books than were possible before?

Of course not. Quality children's books were always easy to find. There was no "impossible to create quality children's book" problem before. There was "it costs money to produce sloppy childrens book" problem for companies that tried to live from producing slop kids books.

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#73

Post by JKCalhoun »

pvillano wrote: post #66
cowlby wrote: post #51

This just seems like laziness vs AI = bad. It's not like publishers are putting out masterpieces with human writing. They're cranking out minimum viable content as well. I've found that by putting meaningful effort into AI storytelling, I can create bespoke stories that my kids love night after night. My workflow is below: Caveat that it costs about $0.25-$0.50 to weave a book like this with Claude Sonnet and Gemini…

I really think that a genAI picture book is like a microwave dinner. You can try to pick out a good one, but a corporation has done most of the deciding for you. Ultimately, it will not be as wholesome as something homemade, or as good as something made by an expert, and it will always taste like plastic.

Fake plastic trees…

I thought my obsession with children's science books [1][2] from the 50's and 60's (the ones I checked out from the library when I was young) was just a nostalgia thing. But when I see the dumbed down crap that passes for "science books" these days (Grossology? c'mon, man…) I realize it's more than that.

FWIW:

I've had a project on and off the back-burner for years now that is a kind of children's science (and other things) book that is meant to engage children's sense of wonder about the world (I mean, it is wonderful). The project is meant to to be an inexpensive, physical book, and meant to be given to students for free.

In my fantasy, a series of these books would be produced that each focus on a different developmental age. Each year the students get the next book in the series to take home and own. (Also, the whole thing is especially useful to poor kids.)

In time, each kid will grow a small library of their own at home…

[1] Example of a good one: Kenneth Swezey's science books like this: https://archive.org/details/chemistrymagic00swez

[2] Another good example, UNESCO's: https://archive.org/details/700scienceexperi0000unes_q9o7

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#74

Post by K0balt »

defrost wrote: post #40
awakeasleep wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

keeping on theme: Tomi Ungerer, moon man https://www.amazon.com/Moon-Man-Tomi-Ungerer/dp/0714855987

Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodnight_Moon ( with bonus book ban credentials: From the time of its publication in 1947 until 1972, the book was "banned" by the New York Public Library due to the then-head children's librarian Anne Carroll Moore's hatred of the book. According to children's literature expert Betsy Bird, Moore criticized Goodnight Moon due to the fact that she bel…

She’s not wrong. But it’s still a great book for kids, for reasons entirely unknown to me. (Parent of 7)

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#75

Post by donkey_brains »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #37
cfmcdonald wrote: post #28

This seems like an opportunity to celebrate great children's books created with craft and care by humans. I'll start: John Rocco, How We Got to the Moon . ( http://www.howwegottothemoon.com/ )

obviously, David Macaulay, The Way Things Work So mainstream, it has a Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_Things_Work

I’m so lucky to have had a copy of this as a kid. Loved that book. It really let you understand how all kinds of things worked, with beautiful illustrations you could pore over for hours. Thanks for reminding me of it.

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#76

Post by cowlby »

pvillano wrote: post #66
cowlby wrote: post #51

This just seems like laziness vs AI = bad. It's not like publishers are putting out masterpieces with human writing. They're cranking out minimum viable content as well. I've found that by putting meaningful effort into AI storytelling, I can create bespoke stories that my kids love night after night. My workflow is below: Caveat that it costs about $0.25-$0.50 to weave a book like this with Claude Sonnet and Gemini…

I really think that a genAI picture book is like a microwave dinner. You can try to pick out a good one, but a corporation has done most of the deciding for you. Ultimately, it will not be as wholesome as something homemade, or as good as something made by an expert, and it will always taste like plastic.

While I don't disagree, there is a scale/volume problem I wanted to solve. If I read to my kids 365 days a year for 8-10 years, that's over 3,500 books. There's a lot of crap publishing out there just cause it's "natural" or "human" does not make it good. So yes we read the classics, but it's great to have a fun creative book factory.

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#77

Post by red-iron-pine »

muzani wrote: post #71
Gigachad wrote: post #8

I've been wondering what the long term result on peoples perceptions of reality will be after all this AI slop. I've noticed a lot of the times I can spot AI slop videos because they just don't match what I know to be true, I can think "That's an AI video of a fox because I know foxes don't act/move like that" But then the only reason I know that is because I've seen hundreds of videos on the internet before AI gener…

Kids grow up being lied to about everything. Back when I was a kid, my mom would threaten to call Batman if we were misbehaving. Today, there's TikTok videos we "call" where a "policeman" picks up and asks for the details of the misbehaving child. After 40, people become gullible again. FB is full of people who think an actual Ghibli clip is AI generated. No offense, but it's these people who can't tell the differenc…

> After 40, people become gullible again. FB is full of people who think an actual Ghibli clip is AI generated.

nah they stay fuckin dumb their whole lives. the rube demographic stays rube.

the difference is arguably engagement -- working people are around a lot more folks, going places a lot more, and are exposed to a lot more; by 50+ they're not, and their habits are a lot more set in stone.

retirees aren't getting out to clubs and meeting clients, they're at home listening to things entirely in their curated comfort zone

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#78

Post by red-iron-pine »

aembleton wrote: post #65
smackeyacky wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did read somewhere that Gen X are the last gen in modern societies to see anything real. Everything is just a simulation of older things. All the stupid bars nd cafes with rustic wood and old timey aesthetics for example.

> All the stupid bars nd cafes with rustic wood and old timey aesthetics for example. Surely that's been a thing for decades. In the 70s, there were bars that harked back to the 1920s. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug

i mean i can find an art-deco "speakeasy" downtown right now, today. novelty trumps nostalgia

Re: AI children's books, body horror edition

#80

Post by blks »

cowlby wrote: post #76
pvillano wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think that a genAI picture book is like a microwave dinner. You can try to pick out a good one, but a corporation has done most of the deciding for you. Ultimately, it will not be as wholesome as something homemade, or as good as something made by an expert, and it will always taste like plastic.

While I don't disagree, there is a scale/volume problem I wanted to solve. If I read to my kids 365 days a year for 8-10 years, that's over 3,500 books. There's a lot of crap publishing out there just cause it's "natural" or "human" does not make it good. So yes we read the classics, but it's great to have a fun creative book factory.

Well, it will never be 3500 books. One book often lasts longer than one day, and kids love rereading the same story over and over and over and over again.
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