Alice and Sparkle

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Alice and Sparkle

Alice and Sparkle is a 2022 illustrated children’s book created by Ammaar Reshi using artificial intelligence. The text was written with ChatGPT and the pictures were generated with Midjourney, based on prompts by Reshi. It was released on Amazon in December 2022, with a paperback edition the next day. The book prompted a big debate about copyright and the use of AI in art.

Plot
A girl named Alice meets magical, friendly AI beings. She creates an AI called Sparkle, which helps with homework and plays with her. Sparkle grows more powerful and begins to make its own choices. Alice feels both proud and a little scared. She guides Sparkle to do good things. Together they use their knowledge to help others, and they live happily ever after, sharing the magic of AI.

Structure and Creation
The book has 24 pages, about half of which are illustrations by Midjourney. The story itself is short—about 343 words—written with ChatGPT, with some images described by Reshi. Midjourney couldn’t keep Sparkle’s look consistent, so the book notes that Sparkle can appear as many different robot shapes. Reshi decided to write his own book after reading to a friend’s child and published it quickly in December 2022.

Controversy
After Reshi shared his experience on Twitter in December 2022, many artists and writers criticized AI-generated art and the idea of compensating original artists for derivative works. Some people even sent threats. In January 2023, Amazon briefly removed the book because of suspicious review activity, with a surge of both five-star and one-star reviews.

See also
- Artificial intelligence art
- Zarya of the Dawn

References
(Not included in this shortened version.)