Amazon’s ‘Create with Alexa’ highlights the intersection of AI and creativity

Bedtime stories have always been essential to a child’s bedtime routine. It’s a time for a child to expand their imagination and vocabulary and is the perfect opportunity for a child and parent to bond. 

On Monday, Amazon introduced a new way to experience bedtime stories. Create with Alexa is a new feature your child can use on a supported Echo Show device to create immersive bedtime stories with the help of artificial intelligence.

In a press release, Amazon states that Create with Alexa helps solve a problem many parents face at bedtime: a lack of creativity. The new storytelling feature uses conversational and generative AI to create a story arc, images, and accompanying music for an animated bedtime story experience.

To engage the Create with Alexa feature, you say, “Alexa, make a story,” and then you can choose the story’s setting, tone, characters, and score. Then, Alexa will create a unique story. 

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Concerns around data privacy and harmful AI content were considered when creating Create with Alexa, according to Eshan Bhatnagar, head of product for Alexa AI. It’s been an increasing concern for parents worried about their child’s safety while using technology, especially when kids are using technological devices as young as two years old.

“We have multiple guardrails such as content filtering and curated prompts to ensure this experience is both delightful and safe,” Bhatnagar said.

Create with Alexa uses an AI language model trained on written stories to generate text. By providing the program with “just a few key inputs,” it can create a cohesive story, according to Amazon’s press release.

Alexa’s AI also learned scene generation to create a background, and it learned to add appropriate objects, gestures, and facial expressions to complement the story. The music chosen by Alexa’s AI comes from an array of instrumentals and uses an AI musical arrangement system to guarantee a cohesive musical element. 

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With parental permission, Create with Alexa is available to use on your Echo Show device. The new feature is currently only available in English, and soon created stories can be shared with family and friends.