Google Gemini now creates AI-generated bedtime stories
Google has rolled out a delightful new tool within its Gemini AI chatbot called Storybook, allowing anyone to spin a short, illustrated tale from nothing more than a simple idea. It’s designed to be easy, accessible, and fun — whether you’re entertaining your kids at bedtime or just testing the limits of AI creativity. But while the feature shows promise, it’s also packed with the kind of strange and humorous glitches that make generative AI both fascinating and frustrating.
A Prompt Becomes a Picture Book
At its core, Storybook is wonderfully simple: type in a description, and Gemini will produce a 10-page story, complete with bite-sized text and one AI-generated illustration per page. You can even choose the visual style — think anime, comic book, or claymation aesthetics — to match your mood or audience.
There’s also the option to upload your own images for inspiration. A child’s doodle, for instance, can serve as the creative seed for an entire story. And if you’d rather listen than read, Gemini will even narrate your story aloud, giving it bedtime-story potential.
Delightfully Imperfect AI Magic
On paper, Storybook sounds like a dream for parents, educators, and amateur storytellers. In practice, it’s more like a dream with a few surreal twists.
Early users report stories that veer into the bizarre. One tale about a catfish trying to fit in with new aquarium friends introduced a team of marble-moving fish — until one illustration unexpectedly showed a fish with a human arm. Another user’s charming spaghetti scene looked more like a culinary crime drama, and a mother-son TV scene featured the television inexplicably placed behind the pair.
Even Google’s own promotional video featured offbeat moments, like a spaceship being built with vague tools and accompanied by mysterious tapping sounds.
It’s clear the storytelling engine has charm, but its visual partner — the image generator — still occasionally gets its wires crossed.
Imagination Meets AI Interpretation
Google offers users some creative control, including art style choices and image uploads. But the AI's ability to understand or replicate those inputs remains inconsistent.
One user uploaded a child’s drawing of a cartoon cat and asked Gemini to craft a tale around it. The story delivered — but the illustrated cat looked only vaguely related to the original drawing. Close enough for AI, perhaps, but still far from faithful.
This highlights an ongoing challenge in AI creativity: while the machine can imagine, it doesn’t always understand.
A Global Playground for Storytellers
Despite its quirks, Storybook is available now across both desktop and mobile, supporting all currently available Gemini languages. That means storytellers around the world can dive in — whether they’re creating bedtime tales in Spanish, interactive comics in Hindi, or surreal fish adventures in English.
Final Thoughts: A Creative Toy, Not a Masterpiece Maker
Gemini’s Storybook is less a polished publishing tool and more a creative playground — a space to have fun, experiment, and maybe laugh at some unintended weirdness. For kids and families, it offers a quick and charming way to bring ideas to life. For adults, it might be more of a curiosity — or a reminder of just how strange AI still is.
If you’re looking for perfection, this isn’t it. But if you're open to AI storytelling with a touch of the absurd, Storybook is worth exploring — just don’t be surprised if the fish grow arms.
