AI’s Promise and Perils on Display in Lyrical New Kids Book by Critically Acclaimed Entertainment Lawyer, Journalist, Poet and Writer Jonathan Handel

The text is by Handel but the 110 illustrations in Who Do You Want to Be? were generated by AI in a single day at a cost of $0.66. As kids decide who they want to be when they grow up, is AI narrowing the choices or creating new opportunities?

More info, video and pics at https://who2b.kids.

Who Do You Want to Be? (Hollywood Analytics; January 1, 2024; paper USD $14.99; hardcover USD $25.99; Kindle USD $6.99) by Jonathan Handel asks kids the eternal question: what do you want to do when you grow up?

That’s not a great reason—but there are many other possibilities in this lyrical story, a rhymed and illustrated exploration for kids showcasing dozens of jobs, careers and occupations. It’s an affirming book written for diverse kids aged 4-8 and their parents, and just might appeal to anyone who isn’t sure what they want to do for work. It’s a fun, clever book that delights kids, parents and teachers alike.

At 68 pages but only 630 words, Who Do You Want to Be? is about a 15-minute read. And because the text began life as part of a song, you can sing the book too!

But there’s an irony: Handel wrote the text, but AI did the book’s 110 illustrations (60 of them full-page). They would have cost about $15,000 and taken months to render had a human illustrator drawn them. Using DALL-E via ChatGPT, it took less than 24 hours and the equivalent of USD $0.66 (one day of a $20 per month subscription). That’s a half-cent per full-page illustration instead of $165, a cost ratio of over 30,000 to one—seemingly enough to put some illustrators out of work.

Handel couldn’t spend $15,000 on the artwork, so no illustrators actually lost work on this project. But illustrators’ past work was reportedly used by OpenAI to train DALL-E. For that reason, Handel is donating 10 percent of the book’s net revenue to The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, a nonprofit organization. “It’s a collaboration of man and machine, author and automation,” he said, “so I wanted to give back.” And that’s a lesson worth remembering too.

     About the Book

About Jonathan Handel

Jonathan Handel practices transactional entertainment and technology law at Feig/Finkel in Los Angeles and independently, and is also a journalist, media commentator, and writer of poetry, scripts, stories and nonfiction.

Handel has written for Puck and was a contributing editor from 2010-20 for The Hollywood Reporter, where he wrote over 1,400 articles. He’s appeared in the media as an expert over 1,600 times.

A graduate of Harvard College (applied math and computer science) and Harvard Law School, Handel is also a former computer scientist and was involved in local politics for a decade. His writing has also been published in the Los Angeles Times, Variety and elsewhere. Handel is a member of the Television Academy and associate member of the Dramatists Guild and the Society of Composers & Lyricists. For several years, he taught a film appreciation and screening class to approximately 400 students for UCLA Extension.  

More information about Jonathan can be found at jhandel.com and jhandel.news.
To request review copies or an interview with Jonathan Handel, please contact Mickey Mikkelson at Creative Edge Publicity: mickey.creativeedge@gmail.com