Sometimes I feel we need to accelerate this trend. We need to collectively drown in a tsunami of slop. Only then will we decide to value quality.
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AI children's books, body horror edition
21–30 of 83 posts
Re: AI children's books, body horror edition
#22The 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?
I think its always been a thing. Give a society any new technology and the distribution curve of human effort doesn’t disappear: a slice of people will aim it at entertainment, shortcuts, and the lowest common denominator (this book), and a smaller slice with high discipline and curiousity will use the exact same tools to become 10x more capable. The tech changes; the distribution of how people use it mostly doesn’t
Re: AI children's books, body horror edition
#23Slop aimed towards children has practically _always_ existed. The "100,000 whys" naming reminds me of an old "700000 games" CD AI slop is just a more complete reimplementation of the "shovelware" from the 90s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shovelware
In case you're not aware, 100,000 whys is a well-established name.
Re: AI children's books, body horror edition
#24The concept of consuming AI generated content for children has always baffled me. We collectively have a virtually infinite collection of already existing hand crafted quality content filtered over the years in the form of children stories and tales that we can pick and chose from to read to our children. We love telling stories especially to our children. Why would ANYONE be enticed by the idea of using AI to genera…
You could say that about pretty much any form of media, people just like new stuff more than old stuff. There's more 9 and 10/10 movies than most people would watch in their lifetime already but people will go see some forgettable trash movie in the theater instead.
Re: AI children's books, body horror edition
#25The 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?
I don't think there has ever been an appetite amongst corporations to improve the quality of their products if they can easily get away with reducing costs.
Re: AI children's books, body horror edition
#26For a moment I entertained the idea that these are intentionally bad to get people to buy them as gag gifts. My kids and I certainly had a good laugh looking at the pictures in blog. That second picture of the jaw sticking out had my son ROFL-ing.
I lost it at the owl one. Tube shape. Skull. Big eye.
It's like surreal absurdist art.
Re: AI children's books, body horror edition
#27This has been bothering me too. When I borrow a new kid's book from the library I now wonder if the illustration or text were computer generated.
Re: AI children's books, body horror edition
#28This 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/)
Re: AI children's books, body horror edition
#29The concept of consuming AI generated content for children has always baffled me. We collectively have a virtually infinite collection of already existing hand crafted quality content filtered over the years in the form of children stories and tales that we can pick and chose from to read to our children. We love telling stories especially to our children. Why would ANYONE be enticed by the idea of using AI to genera…
While I agree with your main point, this isn't exactly true.
The quality content in children's media does NOT survive through the ages. There are so many other incentives in children's publishing that quality for children is but one signal among many. Like how a parent will buy a book that teaches a 'good lesson' as a proxy for a good book, which is harder to determine.
On top of that, there are systems at play that limit the impact of curators who really put the work in to identify good children's books. For example, a children's librarian has to buy books through the city or county procurement process. Only certain vendors will have registered as a valid supplier to the procurement team, and then they have a chokehold on what can be bought for the library, so they can offer their shovelware with larger margin, along with a few compromises about the inclusion of known-good books.
And then to add to this, the rights to publish good books are more expensive, and require more work and negotiation.
Any parents who want an example of this should check out the works of Tomi Ungerer. Really some of the best picture books ever made, and often not available to be purchased at all. Phaidon, a niche and fancy publisher finally secured some rights, and is releasing some nice editions, but you won't find them in most public libraries. And even then, some of the his best work isn't available due to complications (like The Hat, only available in anthology or used books from the 70s)
This is so apparent as a parent that loves to read. It feels like things are even worse than Sturgeon's law would make you think.
Re: AI children's books, body horror edition
#30The 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 is the point. The intent is to automate the entire pipeline and churn out huge numbers of these for whatever the top selling topic of the week is.