Storytelling Is Holy. Don't Feed Kids AI Slop (sojo.net)

Generative AI is flooding the children’s book market with cheap, low-quality picture books—what critics call AI “slop”—and mainstream tools are now explicitly targeting young readers. Google’s Aug. 5 launch of Gemini Storybook, which auto-generates and can read personalized stories, has been slammed for poor storytelling, developmental insensitivity, and inappropriate illustrations. Publishers, authors and veteran creators (cited: Tomie dePaola, Margaret Wise Brown) warn that good picture books require deep craft—rhythm, child-development awareness, editorial iteration—and that automated outputs can’t replicate lived experience or the nuanced decisions that make stories meaningful for kids. The problem isn’t just aesthetics. Major generative models are trained on vast copyrighted corpora—OpenAI told the U.K. House of Lords that today’s models couldn’t be built without copyrighted material—and image tools like Midjourney explicitly map artist styles (its “dictionary” of ~4,000 artist names), prompting lawsuits (e.g., Kelly McKernan). There are downstream harms to creators’ livelihoods, rising accusations that human artists secretly used AI, and environmental costs from power- and water-hungry data centers (reports cite centers using hundreds of thousands to millions of gallons of water daily). The piece argues the AI “pasta pot” may feed demand quickly but risks drowning cultural stewardship, urging adults, publishers and policymakers to be discerning, protect artists’ rights, and push for responsible, regulated use of AI in children’s media.