There is a strange pattern emerging in AI-written children's books, which feature a sharp drop in female animal characters. Writers have leaned on this bias for years, yet artificial intelligence is managing to deepen the divide.
A study published last year by University of Washington informatics assistant professor Melanie Walsh and her team reviewed 300 children's stories, uncovering that male pronouns were applied to animals twice as frequently as female pronouns.
Even with typical associations such as male bears and female cats, the team's poll of 1,300 adults showed that people naturally chose male pronouns to complete descriptions of talking animals. The pattern remained unbroken for all seven tested species, including bears, birds, cats, pigs, ducks, mice and dogs.
AI Children's Stories Show a Sharp Gender Imbalance
These gender imbalances are escalating sharply inside AI-produced children's literature. In an unreviewed follow-up paper out this month, Walsh and her colleagues tested six major AI systems, including ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, by having them finish equivalent prompts about talking animals.
The models stuck to neutral phrasing or addressed the animal by name in 57 per cent of the 24,000 total outputs evaluated by the team.
At first glance, that figure might seem harmless. Yet the researchers discovered that a mere two per cent of animal figures were written as female, compared with 41 per cent cast as male.
'They've basically erased female animal characters,' Walsh explained in a release regarding the findings. 'So they're not only amplifying our human biases, but they're twisting them in strange, unexpected ways.'
Lead author Imani Finkley, a doctoral student at UW's Information School, noted in the release: ''They/them' pronouns were used only twice to refer to a single animal character. In the study with humans, about 3 percent of responses used 'they/them.' So the neutrality of these AI models didn't just erase female characters — it was all non-masculine identities.'
AI Stories Repeat Familiar Gendered Tropes
The team spotted additional recurring trends during their analysis.
'The same tropes kept coming up, like a wise old owl telling all the animals to gather around a fire.
So we're wondering what else we can learn from these outputs,' Finkley stated.
'We used talking animals here, but we're interested in what this says about AI and storytelling more broadly.'
AI Children's Books Are Spreading Fast
The market for AI children's books is expanding rapidly. Services such as Imagitime, StoryWonderBook and Childbook.ai allow customers to effortlessly build custom stories starring their own kids.
The trend has caught on so strongly among grandparents as a go-to present that Wired interviewed multiple parents who found the AI-made gifts rather unsettling.
Gender Bias Could Affect Children's Self-Worth
The gender bias baked into AI children's books carries real consequences, according to Michelle Martin, a professor for children and youth services at the UW Information School, who warned it could alienate young minds and harm their self-regard.
'It's important for children to see representation of their experiences,' she told The Seattle Times. 'If you don't see it in what you read, you get the idea that you don't count.'
Repetitive formulas extend far beyond literature for young readers. An entire ecosystem of low-effort 'educational' AI content thrives on YouTube, where strange, cookie-cutter videos continuously attempt to teach children basic letters and animals.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the main issue with AI-written children's books?AI-written children's books often exhibit a gender bias, with a significant underrepresentation of female animal characters.
- How prevalent is the use of male pronouns in AI-generated stories?In AI-generated stories, male pronouns are used significantly more often than female pronouns, with only 2% of animal characters being female.
- What are the potential impacts of gender bias in children's literature?Gender bias in children's literature can alienate young minds and harm their self-worth by not providing representation of diverse experiences.
