4 days ago
Parents turn to AI stories to get children to read
Parents are using artificial intelligence to encourage their children to start reading.
Amid a national decline in children's literacy rates, three fathers have created an app that harnesses the controversial technology for their toddlers in lieu of traditional storytelling.
It comes after Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, called on parents to read books to their children daily as she announced that 2026 will be a National Year of Reading.
TV presenter Lara Lewington, who co-hosts weekly BBC technology show Tech Now, described the AI-led book creating app Luna as an 'interesting idea for the future of storytelling'.
The app, which took two years to create, allows children to input simple answers to prompt questions before being presented with a specialised and illustrated online story 'book' based on their answers.
The AI-created stories can be based around an individual child's pet, toys, foods or past holiday locations, for example.
'When it comes to doing something like this book, it fulfils the personalisation, and that's something that kids could find really engaging,' Lewington added.
The presenter, who shares one daughter with her husband Martin Lewis, said: 'I was initially reticent to do anything that involved getting a phone out at bedtime, but I also thought the story was fun and the way the animations could be created to go along with it was pretty amazing.
'If in future they do extend it to AI-generated personalised print books that could be a good move forward.'
The three founders said they hoped Luna could reverse The National Literacy Trust's (NLT) study which found last month that only one in three children aged eight to 18 enjoy reading in their free time.
However, the idea of using AI to write books has already come under fire from top authors and editors in the industry.
Last year, best-selling novelist Joanne Harris – who is the former chairman of the Society of Authors – warned that the technology posed an 'existential threat' to the publishing industry.
'Pretty much every author I know has concerns about AI, and rightly so. It is an existential threat to creators,' she said, adding: 'Translators, editors – a lot of people – are already seeing their work eroded by AI.'
Luna's creators have insisted that it will not threaten or disrupt traditional books or storytelling, despite churning out digital books in under a minute.
'We see this as very much complementary to traditional, authored stories, rather than replacing them. The two can benefit from each other,' Omar Bakhshi, one of the founders, explained.
However, fellow founder and father-of-two Greg Findon, said his children had created more than 100 books during their trialling, almost 'crashing' his iPad in the process.
Explaining the inspiration behind starting the app, the Leicester-based 47-year-old said: 'We were frustrated by the rubbish uses of AI – generating stuff that is of no use.
'We also got bored reading our children the same books over and over again when they were young, before then finding they were less interested in any reading as they got older, so we went looking for a solution.'
He added that the biggest problem had been 'making the illustrations good enough'.
It comes after the NLT also found that engagement in reading between fathers and their children had fallen significantly, with less than half reading to their child daily in 2024.
Mr Bakhshi added that the individualised stories make the children 'more engaged,' which in turn makes them 'keener to read'.
'Our goal was to create a space where parents and children can connect through the magic of storytelling,' he added.
The trio, which also includes Dan Coppock, have not ruled out making the digital books into print versions eventually, though for now the only thing similar to a physical book is the inclusion of a turning page sound effect.
