Wrote a book for my kids. Published through Kindle marketplace and the experience was bittersweet.

Since turning forty I have been contemplating my mortality and more importantly what we leave behind. What I live behind for my children since they will inherit a different world than the one, I grew up in. In my opinion intellectually broken. Where a man or woman is no longer valued by what they know and share.

I write stories they could read when the time is right. They are probably not great stories, but they are my words and the thoughts of different slices of time. Also embellish to the best of my abilities reflections and lessons should they choose to accept them. This is a natural thing we humans do – “dad/mom could you tell me the story of when I was born?” a common theme.

My kiddos are you though, the eldest being four. I realized it would be some time before they could read them, so I decided to adapt them into a children’s book. This is harder than it sounds because they didn’t start in a simple form to begin with so it becomes a reduction process, a vocabulary adventure to choose the right words for the age range and picking a narrative they can follow beginning to end (I did a horrible job). The bigger problem – I am not a particularly good artist, and I don’t have the budget to hire one now.

The solution, I off-loaded the art to ChatGPT and ran through many iterations and corrections. This yielded a somewhat usable solution, so I started the process to get self-published, but I am not happy about the art. There are things I see in other children’s books that are missing from mine. Children books rely on layout, colors, character design, and other factors to move the story forward and I feel the images look great as stand-alone pages, but it doesn’t have the same effect.

I still believe humans can’t be replaced by a clever machine (modern day AI-not yet). AI doesn’t understand what makes a piece of literature, art, or story great at the most human level. I wish it was within my budget to commission the artwork and collaborate with someone, but it is an investment for something as simple as a story for my kids. Nerveless it makes me feel conflicted about the correct path forward to accomplishing something when AI can lift limitations at a very low cost. I am committed to offsetting this temporary decision by commissioning the artwork when possible. For now, my kiddos have their story and it’s free in kindle for any other kids curious or interested to learn more about planting pine trees on the moon.

As a last note I understand why people like me use AI to generate images, they are way better than developer art. I am also conscious that today’s AI has not generated anything