Boomers Can’t Stop Giving Their Grandkids AI-Generated Slop Books

Every woman of young children have a a book they are sick of reading aloud, either Rainbow Fish or Good Night Moon. However, in recent years, women and men are facing new problems when it comes to sleeping issues: AI-generated descent how their children are ignorant stars.

Three months ago, on the anti-artificial-intelligence subreddit, a user posted the following complaint: Against her will, her mother was trying to create an AI children’s book about her granddaughter to give the girl for her birthday.

“I have repeated many times that I do not agree with the art made by AI, and I wrote boldly that they should not feed our images in AI or use our information in any way,” the accountant. he wrote. “However, he is creating these stories based on his experiences with my son and taking his characters to have the same characteristics as my son, as well as us (us) our family’s first names to represent us and my son ‘see his family appear.’

If the difficulties are against parents who oppose artificial intelligence, it is because there is a whole universe of AI services that are designed to put real children in books – platforms such as just imagine, StoryWonderBookand Childbook.ai—and other family members can’t resist their special selection of storybook deals.

A 41-year-old father of 7- and 3-year-old children in the Midwest tells WIRED that all of the children will receive an AI-generated book “on a regular basis” from a friend or family member. (He asked not to be named so as not to upset the gift-givers.) The books did not attract much attention, according to this father: “The books are so long that, after a while, each of my children said, ‘Yeah, well, let’s read them.’ Little Blue Truck,’” she says, referring to the best-selling children’s series by author Alice Schertle.

Compared to these endless interests, he says, the tykes were “tired” of what AI had to offer, even if the myth was only about them.

A 40-year-old Los Angeles man says his mother-in-law gave his daughter and son, ages 1 and 3, respectively, four limited edition books, including Mother’s Day-themed stories that are “exactly the same” except for the child’s portrayal. He asked not to be named because of the concern of the matter in his family, because his wife “does not want to raise the matter” with her mother. However, he considers it “disgusting” to feed young children into “such machines.”

Daozhi Xu, a fellow in the School of Humanities at Macquarie University who published it analysis of “children’s book abundance of AI,” says that such selfishness does not guarantee that you are married.

“Kids don’t just like a storybook because their name or picture is in the story; they like it because the story is fun,” Xu explains via email—it’s the “characters, plots, and imaginary worlds” that matter. “Compared to human-written books,” Xu adds, AI-generated translations “often lack humor, memorable characters, and high tension.”

The AI-powered explosion of nonsensical children’s books comes as 40 percent 4th graders in the US are read below the “basics” standard by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, according to a report published in January 2025. Currently, there are alarming signs that parents are doing little to encourage their children to love reading at home. A survey last year by publisher HarperCollins and data company Nielsen found that “the number of parents who read aloud to their children is very low,” and less than half of those with children under 13 said it was “fun” for them. Gen Z parents in particular view reading as a chore rather than a hobby.