How My Daughter and I Created Two Books with AI

When Children’s Imagination Meets AI

Summer holidays are a wonderful time for shared projects. This year, my eight-year-old daughter and I undertook something very special: we created two books together – with the help of artificial intelligence. What began as a spontaneous idea became a fascinating experience that surprised us both.

The Idea Emerges

It all started when my daughter was once again full of creative energy and told me one of her imaginative stories. Her eyes sparkled as she spoke of brave heroes, magical worlds, and exciting adventures. That’s when I had the thought: “Why don’t we make a real book out of this?”

As an AI enthusiast, I wanted to show her how modern technology can support our creativity without replacing it. The perfect opportunity to discover something new together.

The Creative Process: Teamwork Between Human and Machine

Step 1: The Basic Idea

My daughter was the chief author and idea generator. She developed the basic plot, the characters, and the main turning points of the story. Her creativity and spontaneity formed the foundation for everything that followed.

Step 2: ChatGPT as Writing Assistant

Using my daughter’s basic ideas as foundation, I utilized ChatGPT to develop the stories. I provided the AI with the core elements:

• The main characters and their traits
• The rough plot progression
• The desired tone (child-friendly but exciting)
• My daughter’s special wishes for certain scenes

ChatGPT helped transform the ideas into a coherent narrative that was linguistically appealing and age-appropriate. It was important to me that the originality and charm of the children’s stories remained intact.

Step 3: Visual Implementation with Midjourney

For the illustrations, we relied on Midjourney. The special aspect: we worked with Style References (–sref) to ensure a consistent cartoon style throughout the entire book. Every image fit perfectly with the narrative and overall design.

The Style References enabled us to:

• Develop a unified visual style
• Consistently portray the characters
• Achieve a professional appearance

What We Learned

For my daughter:

• Creativity has many faces: She learned that her ideas are the most important starting point
• Technology as a tool: AI can help, but doesn’t replace one’s own imagination
• Pride in the result: Having two real books that emerged from her ideas

For me:

• AI as creative partner: A manual, agential approach is crucial for good and consistent results
• Quality control remains important: Not everything AI generates fits perfectly
• The human touch makes the difference: The best results emerge from combining human creativity with AI support

The Result: Two Unique Books

In the end, we held two beautiful books in our hands – each with a unique story that emerged from a child’s imagination and was brought to life through AI. The illustrations in consistent cartoon style gave the books a professional appearance that delighted us both.

Conclusion: AI as Creativity Amplifier

This project showed me how valuable AI can be as a tool for creative family projects. It doesn’t replace human creativity, but amplifies it. My daughter remained the author of her stories – AI just helped us bring her visions into a form we could both proudly present.

For other parents planning similar projects, my tip: let the children make the creative decisions and use AI for what it does best – a powerful tool that brings our ideas to life.

The most important insight: The best AI projects don’t emerge when we let technology work for us, but when we work together with it.