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Create personal illustrated storybooks in the Gemini app

https://blog.google/products/gemini/storybooks/
49•xnx•2h ago

Comments

xnx•2h ago
The quality of the images, text, and layout was very high for the simple prompt I tried it with.
bongodongobob•1h ago
I can't seem to get it to work. It just summarizes whatever I plug in.

Edit: Even without giving it context, at best, just get a single picture and two paragraphs. Maybe they are slowly rolling the feature out. It doesn't seem to get it.

xnx•1h ago
Try this link: https://gemini.google.com/gem/storybook
bongodongobob•1h ago
Thank you!
ethan_smith•19m ago
Try starting your prompt with "Create a storybook about..." - this specific phrasing seems to be the trigger phrase that activates the full storybook generation mode.
gigel82•1h ago
Damn... pretty good. Generated a 10 page booklet including high quality graphics and cohesive story right on point with my prompt. It would've taken me at least an hour mucking around with LLMs and image generators to get the same result that it spit out in ~30 seconds.
bongodongobob•1h ago
Are you just asking it to make a Storybook? I can't get it to work. Just an image and two paragraphs.
xnx•1h ago
Try this link: https://gemini.google.com/gem/storybook
aeontech•1h ago
The ending tag in the demo video is "For stories only you could imagine"

That's... uh... a pretty bold description for a tool where you are in fact outsourcing the "imagination" part to the machine.

slongfield•1h ago
I asked it to create the kind of storybook my toddler would have asked for ("create a storybook about a music truck and an ice cream truck and a mailman and a carwash", inspired by his request for a story last night), and the results were certainly... interesting.

Obviously Gemini doesn't know that "music truck" is another name for "ice cream truck", but more concerningly, the illustrations it made for the trucks were this kind of eldritch amalgamation of Cars-movie style cars and people driving cars. The story was just OK, I don't think it would have kept my toddler's attention for the whole ten pages. Plus, the mailman is barely involved.

bionhoward•1h ago
gemini app is really funny because they ship ridiculously complicated features like this before fixing the basic ability to have a chat history with apps activity turned off

Imagine the meetings where they decide to add personal illustrated storybooks before fixing chat histories

rmonvfer•40m ago
I think that’s on purpose (the chat history thing), because they actually keep the data (I’m the admin in a Workspace and even though we have Apps Activity turned off, everything still gets logged for compliance and I cannot disable it)

But yeah, it’s Google after all

Workaccount2•37m ago
Few companies are more gifted than Google at having an incoherent product approach.
XenophileJKO•19m ago
Nobody gets promoted for fixing bugs. That is the sad state of big tech.

My theory is this misalignment of incentives is probably at the heart of most of our quality rot in software. Product managers are incentivized to create new features that boost the daily active users, while generally blind to the death by a thousand cuts caused by all the quality issues.

quacked•10m ago
If it were possible to turn off reports back to the manufacturer of what features were used and how often they were used on a grand scale, we'd enter into a golden age of software. I hate using technology now, with every button click reporting that it was clicked and features being sorted by "most used" instead of into logical placements relative to one another.
stillpointlab•1h ago
I asked it to create a story that described the modes of the major scale with a cartoon treble clef as the main character.

It created a 10 page story that stuck to the topic and was overall coherent. The main character changed color and style on every page, so no consistency there. The overall page layouts and animation style were reasonably consistent.

The metaphor it used was the character climbing a mountain and encountering other characters that represented each mode. Each supporting character was reasonably unique, although note motif was present on 3 or 4. The mountain also changed significantly and the character was frequently back at the bottom. However, in the end, he does reach the summit.

I can't say I am overly impressed but it does mostly do what they claim.

neilv•47m ago
> "This is my kid’s drawing. He’s 7 years old. Write a creative storybook that brings his drawing to life.”

Is there something lost, when it's not the adult telling the child a bedtime improv story? (IME, kids love this.)

Is something else gained by the generated storybook?

arrosenberg•5m ago
> Is something else gained by the generated storybook?

The opportunity for low-effort, low-talent grifters to make a buck on Amazon?

pamelafox•1m ago
I think it'd be amazing if I had the energy to make up improv bedtime stories every night. (We have a "King Dragon" improv series happening lately, which involves a lot of farts)

BUT, I don't always have that energy, and I already spend hours a day reading stories to my kids, so I am okay with them spending some fraction of time hearing stories from robots/screens/etc. (Lately, it's "Hey Google, tell a story" if mommy is too busy to read)

I hope we never stop paying amazing children's book illustrators though! I have so many books where I marvel at each page and the ingenuity of the illustrative style.

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