Gemini’s Storybook brings the charming side of AI

The result, delivered in mere minutes, was astounding. Storybook wove these unrelated elements together in a charming tale, warmly narrated, and beautifully illustrated. The quality was beyond professional. What’s more, the story had a lesson to it. The three animals all wanted the big juicy eggplant for themselves, but in the end it was team work that allowed them to obtain it and share the fruit, or rather, the vegetable, of their labour.

Heartwarming stories from Storybook in the midst of so much disorienting news about the world of AI come as a breath of fresh air. They also make for a strategic move from Google. If there’s anything that can introduce AI to the general public beyond tech-savvy early adopters in a non-intimidating manner, it’s the age-old tradition of the bedtime story.

To get to Storybook, just look on the left menu in the Gemini app or in Gemini in your browser. Tap, and here you have the choice of how much you want to contribute to the creation process. I got ‘The Great Eggplant Adventure’ with just a one-sentence prompt. But I also created other stories with detailed prompts and supporting photos.

I delighted a friend with a story about her two mischievous cats and included their antics—toppling a whole bookshelf, bringing down a floor lamp, and destroying a television.

Tales with tech

I also requested a story about some of my favourite Tudor characters, Anne and Mary Boleyn. The resulting story maintained the historical context without my saying so, costuming characters nicely, and not contradicting any historical facts.

You get ten pages of story, and you can ask for any type of illustration, from claymation to pixel art, watercolour to comic style. I even got one story made to look like it was knitted in wool.

You have a few limited choices with the pitch of the narrator’s voice, but anything else you specifically need by way of content has to be spelt out in the prompt. You can’t make any edits to a completed story, but you can tell Storybook to correct or modify something, and it will regenerate the story. Although you can give supporting files and photos, don’t be surprised if the characters look different from the images. This is because Google’s guidelines will not allow you to put actual people in.

You’ll see the difficulty level of the language stepping up if the age level is increased. Concepts too will be more complex. You can have stories for adults as well, but the basic target is children, families and educators. For instance, you can create a story to teach a child the phenomenon of gravity. Or photosynthesis. There are 45 languages supported, so you can get a version of the story in any one of these. Just ask. The implications for education are obvious.

I decided to get Gemini to create a story for me to brush up on the rules for the French past tense for verbs, passé composé. I told it to target the story at a difficulty level that worked for me. I was surprised at the useful lesson as it came up with sentences that had multiple verbs, challenging me on all the associated rules for this tense.

Given that stories can be so easily created and in such high quality, does that replace grandma telling her grandchildren a bedtime story? I rather think not. It actually opens up possibilities for more activities together. Grandma can even be in the story. So can kids’ drawings, favourite toys, photos from a family vacation or virtually anything else. One can also print a story book for colouring.

One can also create stories to explain difficult concepts, make a scrapbook from a family vacation or anything else you can come up with.

The New Normal: The world is at an inflexion point. Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to be as massive a revolution as the Internet has been. The option to just stay away from AI will not be available to most people, as all the tech we use takes the AI route. This column series introduces AI to the non-techie in an easy and relatable way, aiming to demystify and help a user to actually put the technology to good use in everyday life.

Mala Bhargava is most often described as a ‘veteran’ writer who has contributed to several publications in India since 1995. Her domain is personal tech, and she writes to simplify and demystify technology for a non-techie audience.