Splat app uses AI to transform your photos into coloring pages, signaling shift in kid-friendly tech

Splat's app uses AI to turn your photos into coloring pages for kids | TechCrunch

The team at Retro, a photo-sharing app for close friends and family, is experimenting with how generative AI can be put to more creative uses. To try out the latest, cutting-edge AI technologies, the team built a new app called Splat, which lets you turn any photo into a coloring book page for kids. As any parent will tell you, kids love to color. And thanks to the web, there's a seemingly infinite number of coloring book pages available for printing at home. However, many of the websites hosting these pages are filled with ads and other clutter, making them difficult to navigate. Other times, the printable pages are only available for a small fee, which some parents don't want to pay, given the disposable nature of much of kids' scribbled-on art projects. That inspired Retro's team to develop an app for printing coloring book pages at home -- from either your own photos or, those it provides in kid-friendly, educational categories, such as animals, space, flowers, fairy tales, robots, cars, and more. To get started with Splat, you'll take a picture or pick a photo from your Camera Roll. You can then choose what style of photo you'd like to color -- such as anime, 3D movie, manga, cartoon, or comic. The app will then transform your picture using AI into either an on-screen or printable page for kids to color. Instead of requiring a tedious sign-up process, the app will step you through customization options the first time you begin creating. Here, you're prompted to choose your preferred app icon and check off the various categories your child likes. You can also choose if you want to let kids color the photo as a printable page or on-screen (great in a pinch when kids are bored, but you don't want them sucked into a TV or game). You can try one generative AI project to get a feel for the app. It then costs either $4.99 per week or $49.99 per year to continue to generate new pictures. The weekly option allows for 25 pages per week, and the annual option provides 500 pages per year. The option to purchase or access the settings is blocked from small children by a pop-up that requires the parent's birth year. In brief tests, the app worked as promised, and the generation time was brief, allowing you to quickly move from idea to printed art, ready for coloring, cutouts, or anything else your child wants to do. Splat is one of several experiments that uses generative AI to help inspire kids' creativity and imagination in new ways. Another, Stickerbox, offers printed AI-generated stickers for coloring, while Casio also launched a fluffy robotic pet called Moflin that uses AI to develop its personality over time.

Splat turns your photos into coloring pages, and it signals a bigger trend

It's one more example of generative AI shifting from novelty to kid-friendly creative projects. The team behind the close-friends photo-sharing app Retro, has built a side project called Splat that turns your photos into AI coloring pages for kids. Start with a new shot or something from your Camera Roll, pick a visual style, then generate a clean line-art page your child can color on-screen or print. Parents can already find endless printable pages online, but the hunt is often the annoying part. Many sites are ad-heavy, cluttered, or push small fees when you just want a quick sheet for a bored kid. Recommended Videos Splat's workflow is built around quick choices. Pick a photo, choose a style such as anime, manga, cartoon, comic, or a 3D movie look, and the app converts it into a coloring-sheet outline. If you don't have the right image handy, Splat also offers its own kid-friendly categories, including animals, space, flowers, fairy tales, robots, and cars. In brief tests, generation was fast, which keeps the idea-to-print gap short. Splat keeps onboarding light. The first time you create, the app asks you to choose an icon and select categories your child likes. You can generate one page for free, then it costs $4.99 per week for up to 25 pages or $49.99 per year for up to 500 pages. Settings and purchases sit behind a birth-year gate meant to stop kids from tapping through. If you're worried your kid is creative enough to go around these security gates, check out the best parental control apps out now. It's part of a kid-friendly AI wave Splat fits into a growing category of tools that use AI to kick off physical, low-stakes creativity. The goal is something that ends up off-screen, as paper your kid can color, cut out, or turn into a craft project. But if you prefer to keep it green, the best tablets can do the job perfectly. That same direction is showing up in other kid-facing AI products. Miko 3 packages an AI companion into a friendly robot. Curio's Springer puts conversational AI into a plush toy. Poe the AI Story Bear leans into storytelling, turning prompts into personalized tales. Different formats, a similar bet on AI as a spark for play. What to watch next Splat is competing with free printables that are a click away, even if the click path is messy, and subscriptions raise the bar for parents who only print occasionally. Splat is available on iOS and Android. If you're curious, the practical move is to use the free generation with a photo your kid already loves, then decide whether the weekly cap or annual cap matches how often you will actually make new pages.