Amanda Smith is a freelance journalist and writer. She reports on culture, society, human interest and technology. Her stories hold a mirror to society, reflecting both its malaise and its beauty. Amanda's work has been published in National Geographic, The Guardian, Business Insider, Vice, News Corp, Singapore Airlines, Travel + Leisure, and Food & Wine. Amanda is an Australian living in the cultural center of gravity that is New York City.
There are many types of modern-day families that aren't mirrored in books. Most parenting and children's books are made for heterosexual couples, missing the many beautiful families that don't fit neatly into society's standards.
Worse still, many of the books that do exist are getting banned, making it harder to access diverse resources. But I figured that instead of our future child missing out, I could use artificial intelligence to create custom, personalized books that celebrate the story of our families.
Our story is unique and won't be reflected in a standard children's book: It has two moms, a donor and extended family in the US and Australia, so AI might just be the best way to tell our story to our baby.
With all the rage about ChatGPT's newly free AI image generator, I thought I'd see if I could create the whole book with the chatbot - brainstorming, story, visuals and all.
I was curious to see if ChatGPT would have biases, or whether the story would have heart and helpful lessons - and how fast it could create something of substance.
I logged into my ChatGPT account and was ready to roll. Instead of starting out with a broad prompt like "Generate a bedtime story with two moms and a baby," I set the scene with ChatGPT - telling the tool the goal of the book, why I was doing it and what I wanted it to feel like.
Here was my initial prompt: "We want to make a children's bedtime storybook for our future baby. I'm currently going through IVF as a same-sex couple. We used a donor (who our child can choose to meet at 18). Make our child the lead character/hero in the book. We want to tell the story of how he or she was created and how loved they are. We want it to feel like a lesson from a Bluey episode - friendly, fun and non-judgmental. I need your help to ask me questions about our family so we can turn it into a story."
Asking AI to ask me questions will help the story feel more personal, rather than made up. It replied with a bunch of questions:
I responded to each question in a few words. It asked me about bedtime vibes and more story details, then generated the first story draft.
With the task to create a dreamy, Bluey-style voiced heartfelt story, it took the "poetic" direction a little too literally. It read like a poem, not a children's book. Here's some of it:
I redirected it with this prompt: "Make it less poetic and more like a children's book. We should be able to read it to a baby. Remove words like 'science.' Don't romanticize the donor - just highlight we needed help, and he allowed our baby to be created. Make it simpler and shorter. The two moms fell in love, from different sides of the world."
I kept refining it with every version. ChatGPT would focus on specific details I added, even if they weren't important - like how we ride trains into the city.
I told ChatGPT to focus on how the two moms fell in love in New York City, how they love to travel but were ready for their biggest adventure, and while some kids have dads, our baby has two moms.
With a lot of prodding, poking and prompting, I got this version:
I took it and tweaked it manually in a Word document.
The ending was a bit vague and generic, so I asked ChatGPT what lessons to highlight in a book with two moms. It gave some good suggestions that weren't in the draft, so I fed back my edited draft and asked to include it.
I even asked ChatGPT what are some lessons Bluey would convey if this was a Bluey episode, which gave me more ideas.
Here's what I ended up with:
While it didn't necessarily have a strong narrative with a beginning, middle and end, it would work as the first baby book.
Now it's onto the visuals. I used the prompt: "Create visuals for the story, so I can turn it into a book for our baby."
But ChatGPT only created one image, rather than a series of illustrations. It's cute, but I'm going to need more than one.
I told ChatGPT to create 10 visuals that support the story that are appealing to a baby. It got stuck and just re-created the single image.
I leaned into it, and generated the images one page and prompt at a time. Once I had the images, I tried guiding ChatGPT with placing the specific text from the story onto each double-spread with the images.
It couldn't do it, just producing images without any text.
Instead, I decided to use ChatGPT to create the images, then move across to Canva to place the text into the images.
I pulled out a few key lines from the story that would be good visual references, and asked ChatGPT to create an image. For example, "Generate an image of Australia vs. America for a children's book."
Now we're talking.
The problem with AI is it changes the look and feel of the characters with every prompt. The best workaround is to feature the characters once, then make the follow up images zoomed out, where you can't make out faces.
Because I'm on the free plan, I reached my image creation limit, so I could either upgrade or wait until the following day to continue.
With the first three scenes, I moved over to Canva to lay out the start of the book. I set up an 8x8-inch storybook design and prepared the first pages.
While the design is simple, you can envision the possibility of creating more books on different topics. For example, creating a book about our baby's grandpa who passed away, or introducing them to a country their ancestors are from. I could do a whole book on what it was like for Mama to grow up in Australia.
It was a fun exercise with a cute final product. Don't expect AI to be able to do it all for you within minutes, though. It takes a lot of back and forth to get right, and usually a secondary tool like Canva to further personalize.
By adding more details like our baby's name, their birth story and the first few weeks together as a family, I'm confident our AI-generated book will be memorable.
