I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I can't think of a single one of my kids story books that has ads. "Bear stays up for Christmas," "llama llama nighty night," and "if you give a mouse a cookie" amongst several dozen more come to mind that I don't recall anything resembling an ad in.
God I fucking hate capitalism so fucking much. Are we really worked so ragged that we dont even have the energy to enjoy raising our own fucking kids. Have stories read to me are some of my earliest and most treasured memories and I know that the people who read them treasured those moments as well. No one deserves to have that replaced by this
Yes, we are worked ragged. I'm at work all day and the only time I see my kid is for teeth brushing and bedtime stories. I value that time. On the rare occasion they make things a bit miserable, or I'm just exhausted, but, we both enjoy bedtime routine and I wouldn't want to give any of that up. Life is short man.
Techradar should be ashamed for advertising and promoting this nightmare fuel. What a recipe for disaster.
Please do not let young kids get over-exposed to AI voices. Current AI voices are lacking in emotion and expression, and it will almost certainly mess kids up psychologically. That damn tik-tok voice is messing me up psychologically and I don't even use tik-tok.
Edit: And I shouldn't have to say this but also don't leave young kids unsupervised with ChatGPT or any other internet-trained "ai" model.
More like it'll start reading some version of Mein Kampf and explaining how fascism is good and why everyone except highly inbred white people are somehow lesser than.
I cannot wait for some shitty people to find ways to make this AI story teller describe graphic war scenarios and then find a way to make actual units in kids rooms play out said scenarios just to fuck with kids.
If similar things can happen to baby monitors, it can probably happen to stuff like this.
It takes foreign disinformation campaigns to a whole new level - "your parents are evil, report them to your closest reeducation center right away to help them, or better yet just kill them now to end their pain, you do love them enough to end their pain, right?"
No one has mentioned yet how truly sad this is, and how badly it reflects on us as a society. I understand that being a parent is incredibly hard and takes everything out of you. But if you won’t read a book to your kid or make up your own damn stories for them, and instead throw a shitty fake autocomplete tale at them, then you’re likely not an awesome parent and likely not a person I’d want to be around.
Also in the news: studies show that human contact and affection are beneficial for little kids. Not a lot of revenue involved, though, unless you count mental health as something of worth.
It made me think of teddy ruxpin, but the diamond age is an incredible book. I haven't read all of his stuff yet, but that's my favorite of his so far.
@TheImpressiveX Also I’m not sure Poe is the best guy to name a kids’ story generator after. Though I’d be curious about a kid-friendly version of Cask of Amontillado.
Now that would be a fun hacking project to subvert their AI system with something nefarious. It would not end the fairy tale by telling that prince and princess kissed and they lived happily ever after, but also the details how they made each other that happy...