AI children's books, body horror edition - lcamtuf’s thing

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AI children's books, body horror edition<br>Jun 26, 2026

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Last week, I posted a visual demonstration of the sameness of AI-generated content. This makes the content easy to spot even if all the individual pieces are perfect facsimiles of what a human could create:

The 100,000 whys of AI<br>lcamtuf<br>Jun 21

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In the article, I deliberately sidestepped the question of quality. These conversations almost never lead anywhere; the rebuttal is always that the next model will be better than the last. So, I tried to make a simpler point: the books are all the same. You lose more than you might be expecting if you let an LLM be your voice.<br>But as a parent, curiosity eventually got the better of me, so I purchased one of these bestsellers. And before we dive in, I think that children’s encyclopedias are targeted with such ferocity for three reasons:<br>They probably sell well. I’d wager that most children in the developed world get one at some point in their lives.

The buyer is not the reader. The books are judged by the cover and purchased as gifts by relatives or family friends.

In contrast to fiction, the “authors” can undercut traditional publishers without the risk of infringing on any closely-guarded intellectual property.

Of course, these encyclopedias shape the minds of young children, so we ought to set a high bar. Luckily, I’m told that frontier models have surpassed PhD-level intelligence in the summer of 2025. Most of the books in question were published mid-2026 and the artwork points to a flagship model from a major US-based lab. So, in all likelihood, there’s nothing to worry a—

Oh…

Oh.

Well, hoot!<br>Of course, good horror is more than just jump scares. Sometimes, it’s catching the glimpse of a reflection that’s reaching out to you:

Or maybe, it’s waking up on a planet you don’t recognize. You plead and beg and scream but no one will believe:

And hey — isn’t there something off about your cat?

You watch helplessly as beasts and trees fuse into a malevolent, pulsating mass:

The vines twist around ankles; a raspy, disembodied voice keeps whispering unsettling words into your ears:

For the record, all of these photos come from a #1 category bestseller on Amazon (link):

Rankings and reviews can be faked, but if you browse the relevant product categories, this stuff is everywhere. I’m sure the exposure translates into real sales:

So, there you have it. Yep, it’s entirely possible that the models of tomorrow will be able to generate flawless children’s encyclopedias. But until then, we’re messing up some kids.

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