Show HN: I made an app to create personalized stories for children in 5 minutes

5/20/2025 at 9:29:59 PM

This is ghastly.

Children’s books are some of the most wonderful little pieces of art; art that nurtures, entertains, educates and instills both moral compasses and working funny bones. All of our lives have been enriched by them. Some children’s stories continue to enrich us for all of our lives.

This doesn’t just steal work from those artists working today, but it steals from every artist who came before. It adds nothing to humanity; it robs so much.

It also destroys nature to do it. It robs from the world and worsens humanity.

Why do it? Money? Infamy? Internet points?

Please delete the project and do something worthwhile.

by sambeau

5/20/2025 at 9:44:25 PM

I built this project originally for my 3YO daughter and I've generated and read so many stories to her while building it. Those moments are priceless and made it worthwile alone.

by xcanchal

5/21/2025 at 2:34:37 PM

Now just imagine how much more meaningful those moments would have been if it had been a story that you actually wrote rather than something cobbled together from the works of previous writers and artists by an algorithm.

by frankhorrigan

5/21/2025 at 2:41:26 PM

I'm not a writer. Now imagine how awesome would be if you sent this message combining 0 and 1 or even better using smoke signals?

It has nothing to do, but the morality prevents you and many others from seeing through.

by xcanchal

5/21/2025 at 3:42:51 PM

The reason I am a writer and you are not is not because I can and you can't, it's because I do and you don't.

Morality is precisely what's at stake here.

by frankhorrigan

5/21/2025 at 12:37:35 AM

That is very negative and assumes the worst about OP.

He created something and shared it with the world. It's not to your taste and that's fine. But don't knock someone down for having a red hot go at something.

by tastysandwich

5/21/2025 at 10:04:23 AM

It assumes nothing about OP. It’s about what they made, not who they are.

by frankhorrigan

5/21/2025 at 8:03:17 AM

Thanks for your comment. Curious about what he/she built or how is contributing to improve the world.

by xcanchal

5/22/2025 at 9:31:24 AM

Amongst other things, I'm writing children's books.

Each one is a labour of love that takes years to produce. It requires detailed thought from word choices, character design, world-building, characters, to fun plot twists. It's really hard and takes a lot of work. It's taken me over a decade to teach myself how to do it. I've been working on my current book for over two years.

My government has decided that my copyright is invalid for AIs. So, as soon as it is published, years of hard work will be slurped into the mediocracy machine for anyone—like you—to abuse.

It's theft and you are a fence.

by sambeau

5/20/2025 at 7:09:23 PM

I am not an expert on children's stories, but I wondered about the vocabulary – "magnificent," or "newfound confidence." I'm imagining one might want to tailor the difficulty of the vocab based on the age of the child.

by tropdrop

5/20/2025 at 9:42:49 PM

Thanks for your feedback! I myself read these to my 3YO daughter and it's true that sometimes I have to adapt the text on the fly. Always room for improvement!

by xcanchal

5/20/2025 at 6:06:10 PM

I dislike every single thing about this. Services like Spotify and others are now absolutely flooded with AI generated kids stories, it's so hard to find anything with even an ounce of soul among all the slop.

As a parent, I really see that as a cancer that keeps spreading among children media. I appreciate you probably thought this is a good idea for a business or a project in general but for the sake of our children and us all - please stop.

by gambiting

5/20/2025 at 6:19:12 PM

Absolutely agree. This might be a fun personal project. But things like this only hasten the decline towards a dead internet where human-created things with heart and intent are impossible to locate among the dregs of paper-thin AI drivel which only approximates human invention.

Just because we can does not mean we should.

by frankhorrigan

5/21/2025 at 3:42:59 PM

Media for kids has been filled with soulless junk long before AI stepped in. You've always needed to find trustworthy sources to filter through it.

by frumper

5/21/2025 at 6:43:40 PM

I mean, I don't think I agree - like most things with AI, the scale is just unprecedented, because producing more content costs very very little. When previously you had an occasional budget production made without any care for it, whether it's an audio story or an illustrated book, nowadays I encourage you to just open Spotify and search for "kids stories" - I'd wager that 90% is AI generated, with the same kind of storylines, illustrations posted by accounts with no history or a real name - it's just slop designed to extract whatever money they can by absolutely flooding the platform with this. Budget productions always existed, this didn't(imho).

by gambiting

5/20/2025 at 9:41:37 PM

I'm a parent myself and my daughter (3YO) won't stop asking me new stories everyday.

I kind of get your point but the moments I've been sharing with her thanks to this project are priceless.

by xcanchal

5/21/2025 at 12:11:05 PM

So I've been trying to think of a reply to you that isn't personal.....so I'll use my own son as an example.

If I used this project to tell my son stories, I would be worried that all of it is ultimately disposable. He might remember a story he liked years later but it won't exist unless I saved the PDF. It doesn't have an author that you might look up and see their other works There's no one behind it. You might think this is worthless, especially for a child as young as 3, but I assure you it's not.

It is, like someone else called it - ghastly. It's an echo of what actual kids stories are.

by gambiting

5/21/2025 at 12:23:38 PM

You know printers exist right? You can create a physical book in which he'll be the main character of the story in whatever scenario he likes the most. I remember receiving one of those as a child and I remembered it for life. Try asking for a famous author to create that one for you.

There's not just a single way of doing emotionally valuable things and/or a single way of doing "right" things.

by xcanchal

5/21/2025 at 12:30:18 PM

>>You can create a physical book in which he'll be the main character of the story in whatever scenario he likes the most. I remember receiving one of those as a child and I remembered it for life.

And I believe that this is not only inherently worse than reading existing stories, it's actively bad for our children and us a society. Obviously it looks like we'll disagree on this.

by gambiting

5/20/2025 at 6:24:26 PM

I somewhat agree, but it's pointless.

People still go to McDonald's.

by fennecbutt

5/20/2025 at 9:32:52 PM

So just because things are going to get worse we should accept each new horrible thing with open arms?

Nope, let’s keep fighting against the things which cheapen our world and support those who enrich our lives.

by frankhorrigan

5/20/2025 at 7:53:05 PM

But these are still humans. Would you buy food that was designed and cooked by an AI?

by amelius

5/20/2025 at 8:01:10 PM

As long as it hit the right temperatures, sure I guess.

Weird example though, I care about a human touch in stories far more than in convenience food.

by Dylan16807

5/23/2025 at 1:16:29 PM

Yup.

by fennecbutt

5/21/2025 at 10:14:46 AM

good idea! But I wonder if it is a constant and true demand for parents . I think it's a little weird to use a ai-made book, I 'd rather draw with my kid together to create a book or pictures. Only from my view, good try btw.

by bookbyter

5/21/2025 at 10:29:01 AM

Thanks! From my own personal experience, my 3YO daughter loves them and reading those to her as bedtime stories has been very much common lately!

I purchased other custom books created in more "traditional" ways, although I assume there has to be some degree of automation too, and the experience feels similar, she even resembles way more in these than in the traditional ones.

by xcanchal

5/20/2025 at 7:02:38 PM

Interesting, I like the language selection. Checkout doesn’t work though, I wanted ti purchase one and nothing happens (500 response).

by flippinbits

5/20/2025 at 9:39:13 PM

Ouch many thanks for reporting. Have you tried it more than once? It seems to be working for me

by xcanchal

5/21/2025 at 8:02:22 AM

Yes, tried it on Firefox on iOS and Firefox on Ubuntu. Still doesn’t work.

by flippinbits

5/21/2025 at 8:05:28 AM

Dang.. thanks again! I'm seeing the error log now, I'll submit a fix asap and ping you back. Appreciate your time!

by xcanchal

5/21/2025 at 8:12:46 AM

Just submitted a fix! Thank you very much again!

by xcanchal

5/20/2025 at 5:56:04 PM

So does this service have print on demand or is it just a pdf? What is the value add over just using an llm and image generator yourself?

by kemotep

5/20/2025 at 9:40:47 PM

On-demand printing is on the roadmap. Yes you can do it yourself if you want, same as with any other existing tool, but there has been time and effort invested to get the best results with the minimal effort, and it can just keep improving!

by xcanchal

5/21/2025 at 12:20:50 AM

I'm sure you will get very polarized opinion here. I wish good luck to your project.

Getting to the goal faster can be great. I've started illustrating books for my son and I can see the appeal for this tool, especially as a non-artist.

But to me the journey to a arrive at a book (sketching, going to the library, buying books together) are the things that ultimately create memories and meaning. AI should allow you to have more time for these activities rather than removing them entirely.

by tanvach

5/21/2025 at 2:56:57 PM

Thanks for your comment and wishes. Your son is lucky to have you and those unique stories!

I prefer to not think on absolutes and I believe that there are many different ways to create emotional/valuable stuff though! And if AI (or any other tool) helps me creating those I'll welcome them.

by xcanchal

5/20/2025 at 7:12:22 PM

No thanks!

by pianetanaif