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

Kids books don't take much creativity

Its technically impressive but miles away from the story telling power of say Julia Donaldson and I think that's a good thing.

I can see your point but I'm not sure it's that straightforward. Let's say you simply took a hat with your kid's favorite characters from tv/movies/books/whatever on slips of paper, drew some, then did the same for plots, then made up a story to tell your kid.

At some level, sure, it's not the same as coming up with a story on your own - there's not going to be anything meaningful in why you selected those particular elements of the story - but that merely constrains those choices to free you up to be creative with other aspects of the story.

I think there's still room for someone who wants to be creative to use the tools to provide the same experience you're describing. It's not like one has to give the raw output to one's child. And I think such raw outputs will be generally bland, missing something relative to those with a human touch. However, giving bland and meaningless entertainment to children wouldn't really be something new, and I still see a fair concern in there. I suppose this is already part of what articles on "Kids' YouTube" are talking about.[0]

[0]https://www.avclub.com/take-a-trip-to-the-automated-hellscap...

I think this is true, but there are (likely) more children's books out there than you can read in a lifetime, so it seems like adding more middling AI ones to the mix would not be a value-add. At least (skilled) human authors adding to the pile have a better chance to make the story meaningful.

Maybe we need a critic AI that can identify the most touching, meaningful, instructive, and morally enlightening stories out there and help us sort through the already daunting number of options

A fun experiment but LLM generated stories will never escape the uncanny valley, because they're not novel, they're remixes. I know the critique of that position is "but humans just remix the things they know from the world" but that is the same misunderstanding that those who thought truck driving jobs would be automated by 2018 made about that profession. i.e. The less you know about a field, the more likely you are to believe it will be easy to automate.

Art, in this case illustration and narrative, requires a coherent viewpoint. In literature this is often referred to as the authorial voice. Voice is special because of the uniqueness of the human life behind it, which I realize sounds a bit airy-fairy, but is very true once you start digging into what works and what doesn't. When you read something and wonder why it's so engaging when it's not _that_ much different than other very similar pieces, that's often what's at work.

It's also why some pieces really don't work for some people. The "a kid could draw that" critiques of various modernism styles come from this place.

I don't begrudge people experimenting with art through LLM generation, and perhaps it can be a great tool for scaffolding ideas, I grant that. However, I do worry about the deluge of poorly conceived LLM content that will make the good stuff harder to find. We had a glorious age where the gatekeepers had lost most of their power. With the flood of content about to be released, I'm afraid we'll find ourselves beholden to them once again.