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The Human Touch: Why all of our Children's Stories are AI-Free.
- TSE Team
- Jun 13
- 3 min read
This has been a hot topic for a few years now but with the rise of access to AI and the influx of children's stories being written, illustrated and published by the AI models (😬) it feels like a good time to make clear our position on the topic.
Our Children's Stories are AI-Free.
We don't use AI in our projects.
Our company ethos is very much for the human touch and making sure our stories are shared and told with empathy, emotion and compassion that only a human can craft.
There's a strong sentiment and growing evidence suggesting that the AI written content and AI illustrated books (because this isn't just about writing - AI illustrations are hindering a lot of stories too 😅) often perform poorly and face significant criticism.
A few of the major issues with AI being involved in your stories are:
Quality concerns - Soulless or strange sentiments and crazy illustrations.
AI has trouble understanding the nuances that it takes to be 'real', so you'll often see a lot of 'Pixar style' attempts at illustrations but with a lack of depth, detail and usually with an additional hand!
This can create inconsistencies in the projects and make for a disjointed feel overall.
Lack of emotional depth and understanding
AI struggles to grasp emotional stories and the elements that really reach young minds. It can emulate and imitate, but it can't truly connect or create.
Inaccurate Information
AI uses existing data to summarise and provide content. This isn't just the good data, but the bad and the ugly. If it's been published online, then it's fair game to the AI 'spiders' that collect and store the info.
There's a gag at the moment about asking AI how many 'R's are in the word 'strawberry' and how easy it is to manipulate it into being confidently incorrect. Some people publishing stories are generating them and not even proofreading or fact-checking them, as they're trusting AI too much to get these things right.
The market is saturated
There is a insane amount of low-effort/low-content books being pumped out that are poorly vetted and of terrible quality, especially on self-publishing platforms. People can spot this a mile away and are giving these books a wide berth as you'll see reflected in their sales/reviews.
Loss of trust and negative reviews
There's a general mistrust of AI content, and this is reflected in the sales and reviews of children's books on sales platforms. If there's even a whiff of AI, there are either, false reviews claiming the work is brilliant (usually written by AI 😅) or there's 'crickets' as parents jump to the next book trying to find human-written content.
You don't want your author name being tarred with the 'potentially AI-written' brush, or you could lose your credibility in the children's book world.
Your top concern should be copyright.
There is currently a huge debate and legal battle around who owns the copyright of AI-generated content. Right now, it's generally considered to be whoever put in the effort to make the final product come together. However, this can be a tricky area as AI gathers data from online resources and doesn't filter out copyrighted content, so your story may unknowingly be, in part, someone else's work. You run the risk of running into legal battles by using AI-generated content if someone can prove it used their work to create yours.
Also, someone can generate a very similar story to yours if they used similar prompts. There's the question of whether AI work can truly be original.
Finally, the biggest and most heartfelt point we need to make...
Using AI for writing or illustrating has a direct impact on human authors and human artists. Not only are humans better at creating works that are easy to connect with, but they're also from the heart. There's a small piece of every artist's soul in every bit of their work.
You, and the children reading your stories, can feel that.
If you need us to help 'write' the wrongs and give your story the human touch, get in touch now. We'll give your story the human treatment it deserves.
Resources for further reading on the topic.
Why AI Children’s Books Are Scamming Parents and Kids - Family Education "Chatbots such as ChatGPT and GPT-4 generally have trouble understanding the real meaning of life's values, creating stories lacking human emotions."
The Debate over Using AI-Generated Art in Books - Kirkus Reviews
Our Children's Stories are AI-Free.
