A 41-year-old father in the Midwest says his two children, aged seven and three, have already received personalised AI storybooks from relatives. He asked for anonymity to avoid offending the gift givers. After reading the digital books once, the children wanted to return to a standard series like Little Blue Truck instead.
The source of the problem
The issue began three months ago on a forum dedicated to opposing artificial intelligence. One user wrote that their mother was trying to create a children’s book about their granddaughter for her birthday without permission. The parent had stated clearly that they did not support AI art and forbade the use of family photos or identifying information. Despite this, the mother was modelling characters after the child and using family names to make the story feel reflective.
This happens because platforms like Imagitime, StoryWonderBook, and Childbook.ai are designed to insert real children into books. Some relatives cannot resist the advertisements for these specially curated storybooks.
Another father in Los Angeles says his mother-in-law has given his 1-year-old and 3-year-old four slop books. Two of them were Mother’s Day-themed and were identical except for which child was featured. He considers it morally wrong to feed children’s likenesses into these systems but feels unable to raise the issue because his wife does not want to confront her mother.
Why the books do not work
Daozhi Xu, a fellow at the School of Humanities at Macquarie University, says personalisation does not guarantee engagement. Children love a storybook because the narrative is interesting, not because their name or image appears in it. Xu notes that the characters, plots, and imaginative worlds are what matter.
Compared with human-authored books, the AI versions often lack humour, memorable characters, and dramatic tension. Xu points out that about 40 percent of fourth-graders in the US read below the basic standard according to a report published in January 2025. A survey by HarperCollins and Nielsen found that the number of parents reading aloud to children is at an all-time low. Less than half of parents with children up to 13 years old said reading was fun for them. Gen Z parents were particularly likely to view reading as work rather than a source of pleasure.
Brandon Kirkman, an artist and comedian in Chicago, says his parents gave his 4-year-old daughter an AI book detailing activities they enjoy doing with her and her 2-year-old sister. He described the gesture as well-meaning but noted the children’s interest did not hold up compared to other books.
Xu says her research shows technical shortcomings like spelling mistakes, incoherent narratives, and mismatches between images and text mean these books struggle to be educationally valuable or entertaining. Grandparents may not realise that age appropriateness is one of the most important criteria for supporting cognitive and emotional development.
Privacy and transparency
The lack of transparency regarding how children’s photos are used and stored on AI platforms is another major concern. There is a risk that images are shared with third parties or used to train AI models. This makes families more apprehensive than they were about the Me Books marketed on television through the 1970s and 1980s. Those older books simply plugged personal details into prewritten narratives in the style of Mad Libs.
Neither StoryWonderBook nor Childbook.ai responded to requests for comment. Imagitime stated it employs several security measures to ensure user data safety. The company said data is neither shared with unauthorised third parties nor used for promotional purposes or AI training. Imagitime also noted its books are not simply AI-generated but edited by a creative team of writers and illustrators.
Market impact
Parents have also complained about being fleeced by vendors selling AI-produced books not labelled as such on Amazon. There is irritation at children being exposed to puzzles and games riddled with AI mistakes and dismay at the proliferation of the AI aesthetic across content targeted at kids.
The threat to actual children’s authors is significant. While some books cost $54.99 for a hardcover from Imagitime, StoryWonderBook and Childbook.ai operate on cheaper subscription models. The former offers a $14.99 monthly plan for up to 20 stories per month, including full audio narration and an online story gallery. The latter has a $24 monthly premium plan with enough credits to create 50 books a month, with one printed book delivered in that period.
Compared to the labor-intensive process of publishing a children’s book written and illustrated by humans, these are inexpensive tools for churning out books on a virtual assembly line. The children’s book market has been flooded with this stuff, and influencers have pitched it as an easy side hustle.
That claim relies on the assumption that kids will not recognise or care about the difference between a carefully crafted book and low-effort gibberish. Parents are pushing back, and the children seem to agree.
