Alexa, make me a story

Earlier this week, Amazon launched “Create with Alexa,” a new AI tool for kids that generates animated stories. Though a better name may have been “Madlibs with Alexa,” given how the feature – which is only available on Echo Show devices for now – actually works.

To begin, all a child has to say is “Alexa, make me a story.” Amazon’s virtual assistant then walks the user through a series of prompts to determine the overall theme (space, underwater, or enchanted forest), protagonist, and color scheme, as well as obtain various adjectives to pepper the story with flavor.

From there, using a series of generative AI models, Alexa creates a five- to 10-line story based on the user’s prompts. The tale is split across five unique scenes, complete with background images, animations, sound effects, music, and more.

• Amazon even says that if the child chooses the same prompts again next time, the story will be different.
• There are also content safeguards in place to prevent… adult words and themes from being inserted. So you can rest easy – the character of Daddy The Scaredy Cat is sure to have an age-appropriate adventure each time.

🗣🤖🖼 Bottom line: In January 2021, OpenAI unveiled DALL-E, the world’s first-ever AI-powered text-to-image generator. Less than two years later, billions of people now have access to the tech – whether through this new Alexa feature, TikTok’s AI Greenscreen, or the more advanced and research-focused Stable Diffusion 2.0.