AI 'Personalised' Children's Books Are Flooding Family Bookshelves. Kids Are Not Impressed.

Key points

• Platforms such as Imagitime, StoryWonderBook and Childbook.ai let anyone create printed storybooks featuring a real child's name, photo and likeness.
• Roughly 40 percent of American fourth-graders read below the "basic" standard set by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, according to a January 2025 report.
• A 2024 survey by publisher HarperCollins and data firm Nielsen found the number of parents reading aloud to children is at an all-time low.
• Imagitime sells a hardcover personalised book for $54.99; StoryWonderBook offers up to 20 AI-generated stories a month for $14.99.
• Researchers warn the books often carry spelling errors, mismatched images and text, and narrative gaps that undermine their educational value.

A grandmother wants to surprise her granddaughter with a birthday book. She uses an online service, uploads a few family photos, types in some names, and a few days later a printed hardcover arrives at the door. The girl is on every page. Her parents are horrified.

This is now a common enough scenario that it has its own corner of the internet. Wired AI reported on the trend, and the parents and researchers it spoke to paint a consistent picture: well-meaning relatives are buying AI-generated children's books as gifts, the children are bored by them, and the parents are left wondering what happened to their family's photos.

What exactly are these books?

They are printed storybooks created by feeding a child's name, photos and personal details into a service built on AI image and text tools. The service generates a short illustrated story in which that child appears as the main character.

The platforms work on different pricing models. Imagitime charges $54.99 for a single hardcover. StoryWonderBook offers a monthly subscription at $14.99 for up to 20 stories. Childbook.ai has a $24-a-month plan that includes enough credits for 50 books, with one printed copy delivered each month.

Compared to the years of work behind a traditional picture book, those are very low costs. That gap has also encouraged a wave of sellers pushing AI-produced books on Amazon and social-media influencers marketing the whole business as a side income.

Do children actually like them?

Not especially. A father of two in the American Midwest told Wired his kids each received one of these books and immediately went back to asking for a favourite from their shelf. "They are so long and wordy," he said, that after a single read-through both children were done with it.

Daozhi Xu, a researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney who has published an analysis of the AI children's book market, explains why personalisation alone does not work. Children love a story because of its characters, its plot and the world it builds, not simply because their name appears in it. AI-generated versions, she says, "often lack humour, memorable characters and dramatic tension."

Xu's research also documents the technical failures common to these books: spelling mistakes, text that does not match the illustration on the same page, and stories that simply lose their thread.

Should parents worry about the photos?

Yes, with good reason. Beyond the quality problem, parents face a real question about where their child's images go once uploaded.

Xu notes there is little transparency about how photos are stored, whether they are shared with other companies, or whether they are used to train future AI models, a process where AI systems learn by studying large amounts of data, including images. Imagitime told Wired it uses "several security measures" and that user data is "neither shared with unauthorised third parties" nor used for AI training. StoryWonderBook and Childbook.ai did not respond to requests for comment.

If a relative has already bought one of these books using your child's photos, it is worth asking the platform directly what data they hold and whether it can be deleted.

What happens next?

The broader context makes this more than a gift-giving disagreement. With four in ten American fourth-graders already struggling to read at a basic level, and parents reading aloud to children at a recorded low, the books children encounter at home matter. Researchers argue that books which fail to engage children do real harm to the habit of reading.

For now, the most reliable judge seems to be the children themselves.

Common questions

Can I ask a platform to delete my child's photos?

Yes. Under data protection laws in many countries, including the United States for children under 13 under COPPA (the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act), you can request that a company delete personal data it holds about a child. Contact the platform's support team in writing and keep a copy of your request.

Are all personalised children's books AI-generated?

No. Personalised books existed long before AI, using simple fill-in templates where a child's name was dropped into a fixed story. The newer AI services go further, generating both the text and the images from scratch based on the details you provide, which raises different quality and privacy concerns.