SCBWI Weighs In on Google’s Gemini Storybook for Kids

Does anyone actually think AI-generated children’s books are a good idea? Who is this technology for? I’m still waiting for a robot that does chores around my house, so I can spend more time working on my illustrations and reading with my kids.

The Gemini Storybook app is fatally flawed. It’s filled with racial bias, image safety issues, a total disregard for everything we know about child development, and poor-quality results. And of course, the App gives neither credit nor compensation to the humans who made the work it trained on, which was essentially stolen. Even if the App is labeled an “experiment,” children aren’t AI guinea pigs.

The most frightening and dystopian aspect of the App, though, is the concurrence of its launch with a simultaneous national project to defund public education and ban books. I can’t say denying young people their rightful access to literature, information, and education while thrusting soul-less, machine-generated “content” on them is good thing, or the best way to build a society. 

Sure, it might be fun in a brain-rotting sort of way to upload a vacation photo into the App and see what kind of “storybook” it regurgitates. But by considering AI-generated books as a viable form of entertainment for children, we’re not only devaluing the art and craft of children’s literature, we’re devaluing young people themselves. SCBWI’s official policy on generative AI is clear: children deserve real books and stories made by living, breathing, human beings. I have little hope that the large corporations that fund AI tech will become ethical and begin caring about children any time soon. So, in addition to SCBWI supporting the Authors Guild in their pursuits to protect creators and their intellectual property, the best thing that book publishers, creators, teachers, parents, and caregivers can do is stand firm and check in with reality. Does anyone really want children raised on and entertained by AI-generated storytelling? 

If and when generative AI becomes ethical technology, perhaps then it might be useful for some families. (As I said earlier, what we could really use in our family is an AI dishwashing robot.) But no matter how advanced the technology gets, our children will always deserve high-quality books written, illustrated, (edited, art-directed, and/or spoken aloud) by human beings. And they need unfettered access to all of those books in libraries, too. 

Laurent Linn, SCBWI’s Board of Directors President and Chair of SCBWI’s Advisory Council AI Subcommittee, had this to say about the topic. 

The books we create for children carry an enormous responsibility—children’s books change lives. The books that help form us and resonate deeply, that become our friends and stay with us, that help us understand who we are and allow us to walk in the shoes of those unlike us, are crafted by skilled writers and illustrators with care and consideration for how they may impact a child’s life. A human creator’s lived experiences are what make a children’s book transformational (or silly, or exciting, or astounding, or life-changing). 

And just because something can be done certainly doesn't mean it should be done. Children’s books created by professional humans cover every topic and genre possible and are all around us, with more fabulous books coming out every day. They "ain’t broke" and are in no need of “fixing.”