Students aim to generate the perfect book with AI

Since January, third graders at the Joseph DeMello School have been working on their “perfect book,” with just one catch: all of the text in the stories were generated with artificial intelligence.

Students used Gemini, Google’s AI platform, to generate a story for them based on information they told it, including what they wanted their story to be about, character names, setting, the story’s problem or action and about the books, shows or videos they liked.

The software then generated five story ideas for the kids to choose from, including stories about a superhero burger, a coconut man, basketball and dragons. The stories also featured characters such as Stitch from “Lilo and Stitch.”

Third grader Arianna Corte wanted her story to be about two twins that went to the mall and got stuck in the dark.

Corte said she chose this story because she likes “little challenges” and when stories make her cry “happy tears.”

And when it came time to generate her story, she said, “It made me feel scared because I didn’t know what would come up.”

Corte’s classmate, Madelyn Zexter, wanted her story to be about a gymnast who gets hurt and has to recover from her injury so she can return to the mat.

Zexter named her characters after her friends, cousins and “Ms. Kyla.”

“[Ms. Kyla] hurts her ankle but she goes through the process and has patience to get better and do gymnastics again,” she said.

Zexter said she would be interested in generating another story, which she said would probably be about basketball.

“It was cool that we didn’t have to do all the work of typing all the letters in and stuff like that,” she said.

Corte and Zexter are both students in Leslie Gamache’s class, which was the “guinea pig” class for the perfect book project.

“It's kind of cool to watch them be apart from the beginning of the process to the end today, seeing what happens and giving them goals to set along the way,” Gamache said. “They did amazing.”

On Tuesday, March 18, the students presented the project to family members, explaining how they generated their stories with the use of AI.

“I think by doing this parent presentation they can see how it can work in a positive way — it’s pretty cool,” Gamache said.

Instructional technology teacher Liz Voci chose to implement the “perfect book project” as a way to both get students to read more and also teach them about AI.

“At this age they just need to have an understanding of what it is, how it’s affecting our world,” Voci said, adding, “They’re not quite ready to use it yet.”

Voci added that the project also acted as a “secret reading project.”

“Throughout the process … they would get stuff back from Gemini and have to read it, so they were reading a lot, but then it also gave them control,” she said.

At the same time, the students were also learning about AI and how to use it.

“It’s really important to start having those conversations at a young age, and this project has been a great first step for elementary teachers, for them to be able to explore it and play around with it,” Voci said.

With the pilot program now complete, the rest of the students at DeMello are now generating their own stories with the younger students creating picture books and those in third through fifth grade creating chapter books.

“To be able to show the kids what [AI] can do and the possibilities, it’s pretty cool — I can’t wait to see what else they come up with,” Gamache said.