Alice and Sparkle

Product Information

With AI and machine learning tools used in its writing and illustration, Alice and Sparkle is said to be the first book of its kind to do so. Not only that, but the entire story’s plot also centres around the young protagonist creating her own AI companion. This book was also co-created using AI tools to both aid in writing and illustration and is the first of its kind to do so.

Alice and Sparkle is a children's story at heart that hopes to inspire children, encourage their curiosity and learning, in one of the most technologically exciting moments in our lifetime.First, Reshi used ChatGPT to come up with a tale about Alice, a young girl who wants to learn about the world of tech, and Sparkle, a cutesy robot who helps her. “That gave me a base of a story,” Reshi said. “It was OK. It had its issues, of course. So then I started tweaking it.”

There are serious, incredibly valid concerns from artists and writers about all this technology. Their emotional responses are fair, we should listen and instead should ask: To the creators of these tools at OpenAI & MidJourney: how do we ensure protections for artists / train models on consent? Their talent, skill, hard work to get there needs to be respected." Art Shift: The artstyle ranges from the chibi-inspired style on the cover to a more realistic look . Ammaar Reshi, 28, has been fascinated by technology since he was a child. “I was always curious, and my dad let me play with his computer when I was 5 years old,” he said. He grew up in Pakistan before his family moved to the UK, where Reshi studied computer science in London. A job at Palantir Technologies led Reshi to Palo Alto, California, and since 2020 he’s worked at fintech company Brex, where he’s now a design manager. Reshi, a product design manager from the San Francisco Bay Area, gathered illustrations from Midjourney, a text-to-image AI tool that launched this summer, and took story elements from a conversation he had with the AI-powered ChatGPT about a young girl named Alice. “Anyone can use these tools,” Reshi tells TIME. “It’s easily and readily accessible, and it’s not hard to use either.”

Since December 4th, it has sold about 70 copies. Reshi will donate the rest of the copies to his local library. This isn't the first time that AI-generated work has caused controversy. An AI image won a contest earlier this year, much to the ire of some artists (via CNN). Criticism usually centers around two arguments: that the creator did not create anything themselves since the AI did the work, and that AI art is a form of theft because it is trained on the original artwork of other creators. The debate has heated up even further with the announcement of Alice and Sparkle, created by design manager Ammaar Reshi. He completed the entire children’s book within a weekend using ChatGPT, MidJourney, and other AI tools.