The short answer
In our view AI-made picture books range from careless to genuinely good, and the difference is rarely the model. It is whether anyone — the company, and above all the parent — reads and checks the book before it is printed.
Penwynn makes its books with AI and says so, which makes this guide our view rather than a neutral one.
What to look at on the page
These are our practical suggestions.
Does the child look like the same child on every page? The most common fault in AI-illustrated books is a character whose face, hair or clothes drift from picture to picture.
Is there writing inside the pictures? Image models draw letters as shapes, so signs, book covers and labels often come out garbled. A careful book keeps the story's words out of the illustration and sets them separately.
Look at hands, eyes and the edges of things: extra fingers, merged objects and background figures that dissolve are easy to miss on a phone and obvious in print.
Read the story aloud. Does it make sense from page to page, suit the child's age, and end somewhere? A story that is a string of pleasant sentences is not yet a story.
What to ask the company
These are our practical suggestions.
Do they say plainly that they use AI? A company that hides it is unlikely to be careful about the rest.
Can you see every page before you pay, and have a page redrawn if it is wrong?
Do they need a photo of your child? If so, ask where it is stored, for how long, and whether it is used to train models.
Will they put a famous character in it? A book with a trademarked character in it is one the company has no right to print, however easy the model makes it.
What happens if the printed book has a fault?
How Penwynn does it
Penwynn makes its books with AI and says so on the home page. You approve the characters, read the whole story before anything is drawn, and see every illustrated page before paying, with any page redrawn on request. Each illustration is also checked automatically for the right people, drawn consistently, with no stray lettering. The story's words are never drawn into the pictures; they are set on the page separately. No photo of a child is ever collected. Characters owned by other companies are refused.