AI children's books, body horror edition

https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/ai-childrens-books-body-horror-edition

94•surprisetalk•1h ago

Comments

robertclaus•44m ago

The lack of real effort bothers me more than the content itself. We can't be bothered to even proofread children's books anymore?

Analemma_•41m ago

I assume these aren't being published by major publishing houses but rather microbrands and print-on-demand services. They're, like, bypassing gatekeepers and democratizing knowledge, man. Why do you hate freedom so much?

Avicebron•37m ago

the slop must flow

JSR_FDED•12m ago

Yes we should celebrate these plucky entrepreneurs!

api•12m ago

There was a window where new authors could break in with blogging and self publishing. Andy Weir (The Martian, Project Hail Mary, and the bad one that shall not be named) got started this way I think.

That window is now closed. If I wanted to be an author I’d probably try to get a real publisher, with all the downsides that entails.

api•19m ago

These are not made by people who care. It’s a scam basically. Spamming Amazon with slop is a current hustle culture thing. There’s guides, probably AI generated and not proofread, explaining how to do it. They obviously have tricks to game the rankings since these books get recommended like mad in every category.

It’s today’s hot successor to the big drop shipping craze, which is also still happening, and has destroyed Etsy. That was another hustle culture thing. I remember hearing something about it being one of the get rich scams Andrew Tate was teaching at his thing.

You could use AI to help make a good book like this, but you would proofread and fact check it and sit there and converse with the AI and tell it all the stuff to fix… just like vibe coding.

altmanaltman•9m ago

I understand you can use AI to make a good book but you can also make a good book without AI. Why does AI have to be involved at all? Were we running out of children books that we need to optimize a factory assembly line for them with AI?

It's like there are some things that do not even need AI and thats okay. Children's books also don't need a hurculean effort to write/create (the part ai tries to automate and fs up). In fact, its almost entirely about the concept and direct execution.

You mention vibe coding but this is fundamentally different and it doesnt apply

NothingAboutAny•17m ago

the lack of effort has been the main thing for me since this all started. you give people a tool to do something easier and instead of doing more WITH the tool they do this instead. is anyone out there using AI to make more higher quality children's books than were possible before?

kaizenite•4m ago

I think its always been a thing. Give a society any new technology and the distribution curve of human effort doesn’t disappear: a slice of people will aim it at entertainment, shortcuts, and the lowest common denominator (this book), and a smaller slice with high discipline and curiousity will use the exact same tools to become 10x more capable. The tech changes; the distribution of how people use it mostly doesn’t

altmanaltman•13m ago

Because openai and other ai companies spend billions convincing people that they dont need to put in effort as long as they use AI. They literally think they are interacting with a hyperintelligence that is so smart it will destroy the planet eventually. Why would you spellcheck a digital god? Why not just push straight to publish and "automate" everything.

Over time, i hope the chickens come to roost.

rdtsc•32m ago

For a moment I entertained the idea that these are intentionally bad to get people to buy them as gag gifts. My kids and I certainly had a good laugh looking at the pictures in blog. That second picture of the jaw sticking out had my son ROFL-ing.

luciana1u•30m ago

reminds me the meme that a man hiding in the vending machine...

hasteg•26m ago

There are some things that I feel really shouldn't be enshitified by AI and this is one of them. Sad world TBH.

Gigachad•25m ago

I've been wondering what the long term result on peoples perceptions of reality will be after all this AI slop. I've noticed a lot of the times I can spot AI slop videos because they just don't match what I know to be true, I can think "That's an AI video of a fox because I know foxes don't act/move like that" But then the only reason I know that is because I've seen hundreds of videos on the internet before AI generated video was a thing. But someone who grew up seeing AI slop from the start doesn't have that firm grasp on reality to spot fake content from.

blharr•19m ago

Slop aimed towards children has practically _always_ existed. The "100,000 whys" naming reminds me of an old "700000 games" CD

AI slop is just a more complete reimplementation of the "shovelware" from the 90s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shovelware

api•15m ago

The category of thing is not new. The level of industrialization and quantity is new.

Slop on social media also predates AI but at least back then someone had to make it… usually people in poorer countries using it to game algorithms for monetization.

raincole•3m ago

In case you're not aware, 100,000 whys is a well-established name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hundred_Thousand_Whys

aaronbrethorst•17m ago

Those pictures make me think of Attack on Titan for some reason.

JSR_FDED•14m ago

Sometimes I feel we need to accelerate this trend. We need to collectively drown in a tsunami of slop. Only then will we decide to value quality.

Paria_Stark•7m ago

The concept of consuming AI generated content for children has always baffled me.

We collectively have a virtually infinite collection of already existing hand crafted quality content filtered over the years in the form of children stories and tales that we can pick and chose from to read to our children. We love telling stories especially to our children.

Why would ANYONE be enticed by the idea of using AI to generate tales when there are so many out there to tap from is really beyond my comprehension.

thatguy0900•2m ago

You could say that about pretty much any form of media, people just like new stuff more than old stuff. There's more 9 and 10/10 movies than most people would watch in their lifetime already but people will go see some forgettable trash movie in the theater instead.

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