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Con-men are flooding Kindle with AI children's books. They could do permanent damage to childhood literacy.
Link information
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- Title
- AI Is Coming For Your Children
- Authors
- The Only Robert Evans
- Word count
- 3202 words
I mean you should be filtering what your child reads at that age, full access to the kindle or anything is just asking for trouble. With that said Amazon needs to work on curating their kindle store more specially for media aim at kids. But they even have problems with scammer using other peoples work or public domain stuff and passing it as their own.
Ai is great but people are people.
I was about to post a similar response. Parents actively participating in their kids' reading is really important anyway, and even more so with this AI-generated content apparently flooding the (virtual) shelves. And this is yet another reminder of the importance of good librarians; they can help sort the good from the bad; and to use and participate in good book review websites.
Slightly off topic, but my sister is a librarian and the other day a patron came in and asked her to find him a book about the holocaust that's "not polluted by leftist propaganda." The guy gave off major white-supremacist vibes.
My sister gave him a book that's well-respected by historians and another one that's very factual but at a bit of an easier reading level (the guy didn't seem too bright and you can't expect everyone to have college level reading skills) and she's hoping for the best but isn't expecting much since it doesn't seem like he has any interest in changing his (presumably denialist) views. But you never know... education can go a long way for some people.
It’s not always easy to tell when a book is AI generated by the cover (which is frequently all you can see) and parents who speak English as a second language or have low literacy themselves will be in an even worse position to tell once starting to read it. It’s easy to blame the parents for everything but I don’t think it’s warranted here. Having said that I do think there are benefits to physical books over digital for young children, which is an easy way for parents to avoid this issue. Libraries, as you rightly say, and charities like Dolly Partons, where she sends free books to any child that signs up, are great resources for people who can’t afford to buy new. Kids also love repetition, so no one should worry that they only have a few books - I’m sure the kids still enjoy them!
There are also some really, really bad children's books out there, even before AI.
We've gotten a few as gifts that are just awful. I'm not talking theme or message either, (although I've seen some questionable content in that regard as well) but just basic storytelling.
Luckily, this filtration problem is self-correcting when parents read the same book 5,000 times.
I’ve got two very young kids and this has been my experience too. NYT bestsellers (I know this can be gamed), other lists and awards, it doesn’t matter. Poor storytelling, janky wording, incorrect vocabulary, bottom-budget clip art or photoshop cut&paste. And that’s even before looking at the message, if there’s even one at all. AI isn’t going to make it much worse, and the bar is already so low that has a good chance of making the bottom tier better.
ChatGPT etc can't generate full-length books that would fool an adult reader into thinking they're genuine. but together with art generation models like Midjourney, they can generate children's books. and there seems to be a cottage industry of people doing just that in order to make a quick buck.
Robert Evans also discussed this in a two-part episode of his podcast Behind the Bastards:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-ai-is-coming-for-117712422/
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-two-ai-is-coming-for-117856227/
I listen from time to time, I'm not some huge Behind the Bastards fan, but those episodes were really good. Luckily I already knew what to expect from the podcast (good stuff), otherwise I probably wouldn't have clicked since the title sounds like clickbait for doomscrollers. It's not that though.
If y'all have time to burn on the commute or treadmill or whatever, give it a listen.
Plus, Ben Bowlin was a guest! Absolutely love him. Stuff They Don't Want You to Know was one of my favorite podcasts back in the day.
Yep, this definitely looks like a grift. Some parents will likely be tricked into buying low-quality childrens' books. But what evidence is there that kids will be harmed? Journalists have talked to people trying to sell the books, but no parents or kids who bought them were interviewed. The author is worried but doesn't seem to know. I have no evidence either, but here are reasons to be skeptical:
How do we know kids will like these books? Sure, there are weird videos on YouTube that kids like and watch obsessively, but kids will also drop anything pretty quickly that doesn't appeal to them. It seems doubtful that most AI-generated books will be particularly appealing. They might just be a waste of money, and if so they will likely get bad reviews from parents. (Unlike YouTube videos, parents have to buy these books, so they're somewhat more likely to notice.)
But maybe a few books will be appealing, by chance, and parents won't give them bad reviews? Maybe Amazon's algorithm will start recommending them? Maybe these books will be a little weird. I still think it's unlikely that they will do much harm.
Kids are imaginative. They make up lots of stuff that isn't true, and they get exposure to lots of odd ideas, often generated by other kids. It tends to work out in the end. Have you seen kids' drawings? Have you heard their stories? Sometimes they're pretty nonsensical too.
That's not proof of anything, but I think we should remain uncertain about whether there's any harm done to kids. Maybe it's just to parents' wallets and Amazon's reputation due to having low-quality junk.
Yes, to be fair I’ve read some very bad physical kids books to my children that have been through the traditional publishing route. There are very valid reasons to oppose AI-generated books, but until there are some examples or evidence to back up that it could be harmful I think it would be better to focus on other arguments
Would you mind talking about what was bad about them?
I can’t think of many specific examples, but things like the story not flowing well, the message of the story being less than ideal (here I do have an example: Rainbow Fish, the message of which seems to be that people will like you if you shrink yourself to be lesser), the meter being off in rhyming books (this one really bothers me!). Mostly not actively harmful to kids (rainbow fish is debatable) but also not ideal ways to introduce them to the art of storytelling
The Giving Tree is right up (or down) there with Rainbow Fish in terms of harmful messaging...
Yeah, the environment will just give endlessly for your needs, and make you feel good about it too. Isn't that nice, boys and girls?
Ah, when we read it, it was "you should give of yourself and make people happy"... until it kills you?
That's also a totally legit interpretation. I guess I was centering my narrative in the boy, even as he wasn't the subject of the story and thinking of the tree as functionally a passive cheerleader who gave of themself without recognition.
I work in a nursery so we’ve had a variety of books. Some were just lazy, recycling the same thing over and over again like all the tiny variations they make to the gruffalo and then pretend it’s different.
Some were weird. There was a book that was framed as suitable for preschool but we binned it. The story was that a young boy was a billionaire but then he got kidnapped for all his money and then the kidnappers either didn’t return him or they did but he now lived out of a box. Didn’t want to be responsible for the nightmares that would have caused
Some just don’t flow, they just suddenly drop the rhythm they’ve had for the rest of the book
There’s one that I’ll always remember because I was just so surprised at the ending. I think it was called chicken clickin. There’s a chicken on a farm and when the farmer is asleep, the chicken buys stuff on his computer, I think one of the things he bought was a monster truck. He keeps buying things until he realised he actually wants to make a friend, so he makes a social account and makes an online friend. He goes to meet up with this new friend and it’s a fox… they don’t say it but there’s just some feathers floating to the ground and yeah… we all know what happened to him. It’s always stuck out to me because it doesn’t even address the stealing the farmers money to buy stuff (which is where it seems like it could be going for a while) and although the end message is kind of be careful who you meet online, it’s done in a subtle way but also a really dramatic way because an adult or older child knows that chicken is dead. It was just odd the first time you read it and we all couldn’t decide if we liked it or not
I don't think it is only books. Fortunately we don't have any kids, but spending time at friend's places with kids, the shit I see then watching on TV is almost certainly AI generated (at least in part).