Man Brags About Using AI To Publish Children's Book In A Weekend, Does Not Receive Praise

Anyone who has been on Twitter for any amount of time knows that the one faction you absolutely do not mess with is Book Twitter — a group notoriously prone to controversies and infighting. However, one tech bro was able to unite the various sects against a common enemy by proudly declaring he'd used AI to bang out a children's book over the course of a weekend.

I spent the weekend playing with ChatGPT, MidJourney, and other AI tools… and by combining all of them, published a children’s book co-written and illustrated by AI!

Here’s how! 🧵 pic.twitter.com/0UjG2dxH7Q

— Ammaar Reshi (@ammaar) December 9, 2022

On Friday, Twitter user Ammaar Reshi posted a thread detailing how he'd used various AI tools to make Alice and Sparkle, a children's book that is, in essence, written and illustrated by artificial intelligence about a young girl learning about the magic of artificial intelligence.

The thread details how he fed writing prompts into ChatGPT (like "Describe what Sparkle looks like"), and the AI spit back paragraphs that he would then tweak with a new prompt. Reshi describes this process as "like having a constant brainstorming partner who I could ping pong ideas off of."

He then went to Midjourney and fed it prompts until he could get a consistent art style. He stitched the results together and published Alice and Sparkle through Amazon Kindle Publishing.

I combined all of those and put them together in a book format and signed up to Amazon Kindle Publishing! Filled out the book details, created a little cover, even had ChatGPT help me with the description. pic.twitter.com/9Hobi8sFwt

— Ammaar Reshi (@ammaar) December 9, 2022

Considering Reshi did not write or illustrate anything in the book he will receive the profits from, his venture rubbed many the wrong way, and hardly elicited the "oohs" and "wows" his thread seemed to encourage. Instead, most tweeters were quite harsh in their criticism of Reshi's endeavor — as is often typical of AI art criticism nowadays.

Some discussed how children's books take imagination and creativity that is clearly beyond AI capabilities, while others took a more streamlined approach in their criticisms.

There’s a lot of reasons why the ai children’s book upsets me: lack of respect for the arts, disrespecting the craft of making children’s books etc.

Most of all, it’s the idea that children don’t deserve media that takes time and effort to create. They deserve better.

— dee! | illustrator (@deandra_hodge) December 12, 2022

what you're doing is a net negative for society culture and art and I hope you repent for your sins

— america's lounge singer (@KrangTNelson) December 12, 2022

As a children’s author/illustrator, it is saddening to see these books bc, apart from the ethics of AI and stolen artwork, kids deserve better!!!

I’m tired of people who see kidlit as an easy get-rich-quick scheme and putting in the absolute minimal effort into their books https://t.co/I5WnlTiZgS

— anoosha syed (@foxville_art) December 12, 2022

As for the book itself, the snippets that Reshi showcased did not appear to impress many annoyed Twitter users. One post by @Coreybrickley pointed out the AI's numerous basic illustration errors that would never have been submitted by a competent illustrator.

just wanna save this for posterity in case i get blocked pic.twitter.com/oa4rLXPBGq

— Corey Brickley Illustration (@CoreyBrickley) December 12, 2022

Reshi then responded to the controversy by noting that in response to his thread, there were many "people who are incredibly excited about empowering tech giving them the ability to create things they couldn’t before" (though such posts are difficult to find), that there are artists concerned about the implications his venture has for their livelihoods and "keyboard warriors" who are sadly not open-minded about the topic.

This last point was received about as well as you might expect.

“Hey man, using an AI that interpolates stolen art isn’t the same as being an artist, and profiting on the work it stole is wrong.”
“There is an important conversation to have about this.”
“Not much of a conversation, it’s just theft.”
“The conversation is so important.”

— Han Solo Knows What A Duck Is (@montresaurusrex) December 12, 2022