Parents are increasingly gifting AI-generated children’s books to their grandchildren, despite concerns about the quality and appropriateness of the content. A 41-year-old father of two in the Midwest says his children have received personalized AI-generated books from family members, but the stories failed to engage the kids. 'They are so long and wordy that, after one time through, each of my kids was like, 'Yeah, OK, let’s read Little Blue Truck,' he says, naming a best-selling children’s series by author Alice Schertle. The books, which were meant to feature the children, were deemed uninteresting compared to traditional stories. 'They were simply 'bored' by what AI had to offer,' he adds. The father requested anonymity to avoid offending the gift givers. Another father, 40, in Los Angeles, says his mother-in-law has gifted his daughter and son, aged 1 and 3, a total of four AI-generated books, including a pair of Mother’s Day-themed stories that are 'exactly the same' apart from which kid is featured. He requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter within his family, since his wife 'doesn’t want to raise the issue' with her mother. Still, he considers it 'morally reprehensible' to feed kids’ likenesses into 'slop machines.'
Daozhi Xu, a fellow in the School of Humanities at Macquarie University who has published an analysis of 'the AI children’s book boom,' says that this kind of personalization doesn’t guarantee engagement. 'Children do not love a storybook simply because their name or image appears in the story; they love the book because the story itself is interesting,' Xu explains via email—it’s the 'characters, plots, and imaginative worlds' that matter. 'Compared with human-authored books,' Xu adds, the AI-generated versions 'often lack humor, memorable characters, and dramatic tension.' The AI-fueled explosion of junk children’s books comes as about 40 percent of fourth-graders in the US are reading below the 'basic' standard set by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, according to a report published in January 2025. Meanwhile, there are alarming signs that parents are doing less to foster their kids’ love of reading at home. A survey last year by publisher HarperCollins and data firm Nielsen found that 'the number of parents reading aloud to children is at an all-time low,' and less than half of those with kids aged up to 13 said that it was 'fun' for them. Gen Z parents were particularly likely to see reading as work rather than a source of pleasure.
Source: wired
