Google has launched “Storybook,” a new feature within its Gemini AI chatbot that generates illustrated children’s stories on demand. Users can describe a story idea and receive a 10-page narrative complete with text that Gemini reads aloud and accompanying AI-generated illustrations, marking Google’s latest push into creative AI applications for families.
How it works: The Storybook feature creates customized stories based on simple text prompts, offering several personalization options.
- Users can specify art styles including claymation, anime, comics, and other visual approaches to match their preferences.
- The tool accepts uploaded photos and images as reference material, allowing parents to create stories based on their children’s drawings or other personal content.
- Each story contains 10 pages with short paragraphs that Gemini can read aloud, creating an interactive bedtime story experience.
The AI quirks: Testing revealed typical AI-generated content inconsistencies that users should expect.
- One story about a catfish in an aquarium featured an illustration with a human arm inexplicably attached to a fish character.
- Another story made a spaghetti sauce scene resemble “a cartoon crime scene,” while a family watching TV had the screen positioned on the wrong side.
- Even Google’s promotional video contained an AI oddity, showing a woman building a spaceship while making “tap, tap, tap” noises with tools that don’t match the sounds.
What you should know: The feature represents Google’s continued expansion into family-oriented AI tools, despite the inherent limitations of current image generation technology.
- Character designs often lack consistency across story pages, a common challenge with AI-generated sequential content.
- The tool didn’t always interpret user-uploaded artwork as intended, suggesting the reference image feature may need refinement.
- Most stories generated standard children’s content without major AI artifacts, indicating the technology works reasonably well for basic storytelling.
Availability: Storybook is now accessible globally on both desktop and mobile devices, supporting all languages currently available in Gemini.
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