I Made A Children's Book with AI Art, and You Can Have It

Read this if you need an easy present for a 2-3 year old kid

If anyone in my family is reading this—surprise! Don’t tell my niece, of course.

My niece turned two last month. When I visited for Thanksgiving, she was really into having me read bedtime stories to her. I like coming up with creative gifts for people, and I’m always looking to play around with AI, so I came up with the idea of using AI tools to make her a custom bedtime story.

I had ChatGPT generate a short bedtime story inspired by Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series, because it’s never too early to get kids into science fantasy. I tried having MidJourney generate the images; there’s a function that’s supposed to maintain a consistent character from one image to the next, but I didn’t find it consistent enough, so I went back to the drawing board.

Her favorite book was a book about sharks— each page is about a different kind of shark so no character repeats itself. I decided to do that instead– a sort of children’s bestiary from a science fantasy world.

Here are all the files, including front and back covers.

I generated this with MidJourney, then used Photoshop to add the text. I then ordered it printed as a photo book from Shutterfly– they’re all in the same square aspect ratio, so I got them in 10x10. If you want to go that route and have a CostCo membership, google CostCo printing– you can get 51% off. You’ve got just enough time to have it delivered before Christmas Eve.

The other option is to just print these yourself and then get them bound; you should be able to have them spiral bound at FedEx Office or similar shops. You can also chop off the extra white space that you’ll get when you print them onto normal printer paper.

I love thinking about all the ways that AI is going to revolutionize the way we live and work, but there are many personal uses for it that are currently under-explored. I’ve mentioned using it for home-brew Dungeons and Dragons content before; there’s also this, using it to write love poems for your girlfriend, etc. The possibilities for using AI to make something thoughtful and personal for someone you love are endless, and we shouldn’t overlook that while we’re busy changing the world.