AI-driven Creative Apps for You and Your Kids: Introduction

It came unexpectedly and changed everything: our life, our work, our daily routines. COVID-19 is disrupting our world in unimaginable ways. Now #SocalDistancing and #HomeOffice are trending topics (even if we have to avoid #SocialDistancing, especially now).

Many of you are currently working in the home office. And your kids have to do home-office as well. Schools are closed, kindergartens as well (even if they are opening bit by bit). Multitasking is not a skill: it’s existential.

The positive impact of Corona

So are all our researches and projects, our families, and kids staying on the brink (considering the virus lurking outside)? Not at all. Especially now.

Let’s say me something provocative, but IMHO essential:

Thank Corona, the average Digital Competence of our Society (worldwide) is about to increase. People stay in touch online, kids have more access to digital tools. Probably even the very last person, who used to be skeptical about digitalization, now sees the crucial value of this level of existence. Apropos, kids: they have a great chance now to learn more about digital topics, about the online layer, about AI. Staying inside doesn’t mean being excluded from the Big Outside.

In this article, I want to share with you some strategies and tools to engage our children, to inspire them for the future, and to spend the lockdown times creatively. Together.

AI and Kids: an explosive mix. A use case.

Last summer, I decided with my daughter (then 7) to make a small book with the help of AI. We wrote several fairy tales using GPT-2, and she illustrated it per hand. To that time, I used TalkToTransformer.com for text generating. Here is what we’ve got. (Our prompt for this story was “A king wanted to fly”)

A king wanted to fly. His plane would come.

"You guys are not coming, so let him fly."

The pilot stared at that in the mirror, his eyes wide. His eyes were wide and bloodshot. His back was flat against the wall.

"Get him through."

He looked down. It was true, the door had been opened from the inside. An enormous fist from above.

"What are you doing now?"

And the door opened.

In the middle of the room, there was a girl. In a green striped dress that was very short, her hair was short and her eyes were wide as well, her eyes were blue as well.

She was young, but very ugly. Her lips were a pale yellow and there weren't any teeth here.

No!

Hundred-year-old!

He stared at her for a long time, then smiled.

"Gee, you look like a normal child and can't help but laugh, I guess."

"How old are you, then?"

She looked at him, the young girl's mouth dropped slightly, which was not the right expression to say.

"Five."

"Five?"

A hundred!

***

Creating this story was a lot of fun. My daughter became interested in AI as a creative tool — and we began our AI&Art journey.

Some months later, I was glad, reading this beautiful and inspiring essay by Jason Boog about mixing paper crafts and Artificial Intelligence (GPT-2 and BigGAN) for increasing digital skills, fun, and creativity with kids.

So let’s collect and share AI-based creative tools, raising digital competence, and bringing additional value — fun - to our kids.

Index:

1. Tell a Story
2. Paint a Picture
3. Create a World

This is an edited version of my Essay at Towards Data Science.