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Somewhere out there right now, a grandmother is putting the finishing touches on a masterpiece.
It’s a 12-page picture book, and her grandson is the star. On page one he’s riding a dinosaur. By page four he’s flying a rocket. On page nine he’s shaking hands with a very friendly whale.
She made the whole thing in one afternoon with a free AI program. She hits “send” to her daughter, sits back, and waits for the gushing.
The gushing does not come.
(That grandma is imaginary, by the way. But according to the internet, there are thousands of real ones.)
The Internet Gave It a Name. It’s Not a Nice One.
Recently a Reddit thread about grandparents and AI pictures took off. TechRadar’s AI editor, Graham Barlow, wrote it up and gave the whole thing a name: “grandmaslop.”
“Slop” is internet slang for cheap, low-effort stuff cranked out by AI. So yes, it’s exactly as flattering as it sounds.
Here’s the complaint. Grandparents have discovered free AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. They’re feeding in photos of the grandkids and turning them into cartoon portraits, fantasy scenes, and whole storybooks. Then they email them to the grandkids’ parents, who are… less thrilled.
“I’m Gen X, but my Boomer mom made a whole AI book for both of my kids. It was bizarre,” one parent wrote.
Another one reviewed the writing: “One was a rhyming book that had words that didn’t rhyme.”
Which, to be fair, is a pretty fair review. If you’re making a rhyming book, the least the robot can do is rhyme.
It’s Not Really About the Rhyming
Look a little closer, and the grumbling isn’t really about bad poetry.
One commenter asked a question that’s hard to shake. If photos are how we hold on to real moments, “what is an AI-generated image, if it’s a moment of time that never existed?”
Your grandson never actually rode a dinosaur. (We checked.) A cartoon is obviously a cartoon. But AI pictures are getting good enough to pass for real photos. Some parents don’t love watching the family album fill up with things that never happened.
Then there’s the bigger worry: privacy.
Business Insider talked to families dealing with the same thing. One mother said relatives sent her AI pictures of her toddlers riding the Polar Express, with their faces slightly changed.
They were made with Grok, the AI chatbot from Elon Musk’s company xAI. Her first thought wasn’t “how cute.” It was: where did my kids’ faces just go, and what could someone do with them later? (Her name was changed in the story to keep the peace at home.)
A man who works in AI oversight for a living found a cartoon of his own family, made from a family photo. Nobody had asked him first.
Paromita Pain, a media professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, told Business Insider this isn’t about who’s better with technology. It’s about how each generation learned to think about privacy. Today’s parents grew up watching the internet turn private moments into public ones. To them, a photo of their kid going into an AI program isn’t a craft project. It’s a photo leaving the house.
And Then Things Got Personal
The TechRadar writer noticed something else. The Reddit thread kept drifting away from AI and toward a much older complaint: grandparents who say they miss the grandkids but don’t visit much.
That’s the part that stings. And TechRadar got it about right. There’s “nothing inherently wrong with a grandparent making a silly AI picture of their grandkids riding a dinosaur or flying through space. Some children will probably love it.”
The trouble starts when the AI book shows up instead of Grandma.
How to Be the Grandparent Whose AI Book Gets Framed
Making something silly and sweet for your grandkids is a lovely idea. You just want it to land. Here’s how:
Ask first. Before a single photo goes into an AI program, check with the parents. It takes one text: “Mind if I make a silly storybook with Sam’s picture?” Most will say yes. The ones who say no just saved you a very awkward Thanksgiving.
Know where the photo goes. When you upload a picture to an AI tool, it goes to that company’s computers, not just yours. Depending on the service and your settings, the company may keep it, and may use it to help train its AI. Most of the big tools have a setting that controls this. Look under Settings, usually in a section called something like “Data” or “Privacy.”
Keep it in the family. Send it to the parents. Don’t post it on Facebook. A child’s face, changed by AI, is exactly the kind of thing parents want to keep control of.
Say it’s AI. Put “Made with AI, by Grandma” right on the cover. Nobody gets confused about what’s real. And it’s kind of a brag.
Read it to them yourself. This is the big one. Don’t just email it. Read it to the grandkids on a video call, and do all the voices. (Yes, even the whale.) Now it’s not a shortcut. It’s an evening together.
The Part the Robot Can’t Do
AI can draw your grandson riding a dinosaur in about ten seconds.
It can’t laugh at the dinosaur with him.
That part is still your job. And you’re a lot better at it.
