As a new father, Jose Gonzales was disappointed to find so few picture books featuring characters who look like his daughter. “She’s biracial,” he says. “A lot of the popular children’s books have a white, blue-eyed, blonde girl as the main character.” And books that did feature biracial kids were too often focused on diversity as a subject, rather than telling the story about a kid that, say, wanted to be an astronaut, and just happens to be biracial.
Gonzales says:
“I want for her growing up to realize that her diversity is really important, but that it’s not her entire identity, and that she can be anything.”
That’s why in 2023, Gonzales teamed up with two former Amazon colleagues to found Naria, a startup that allows children and their parents to utilize AI to self-publish books complete with their very own characters and story lines. Families have already made more than 100,000 stories on the platform. The startup is currently participating in the Techstars accelerator program, and wants to further simplify creation with the development of dedicated iOS and Android apps.
Naria’s web-based editor lets children and parents/guardians describe their main characters or upload photos to create illustrations based on real people, and then use generative AI to create backgrounds, plot outlines, and more.
Gonzales says:
“Kids can make themselves a main character, but also [use] any characters they come up with, and create their own stories and universes,” Gonzales says.
The resulting story can be ordered as a physical, one-of-a-kind book. In that regard, Naira books are similar to personalized storybooks that have been available for decades—except with a lot more creative freedom, as most of those existing services only change the names in picture books that are meant to appeal to the widest possible audience. “It’s now your story, not someone else’s story. That’s much more powerful.” Gonzales says.
Building Naria has been a learning process for Gonzales and his cofounders. “When we started, we thought the AI should do most of the heavy lifting,” he says. But during early testing, the team quickly discovered that children actually preferred agency over automation. “At the end of the day, kids really wanted to hold a pen,” he says.
Instead of generating the entire story in one swoop, Naira now lets children add to their story, page by page. Characters can be freely placed on the page, and storylines can be tweaked throughout. “We really see it more as an enabler, not as the doer,” Gonzales says.
Navkiran Dhaliwal is a seasoned content writer with 10+ years of experience. When she's not writing, she can be found cooking up a storm or spending time with her dog, Rain.
