Is This the End of Bedtime Stories? California Dad Sparks Fury by Getting AI Chatbot To Read to His Newborn

An AI engineer has sparked a fierce online backlash after suggesting he could train an artificial intelligence voice model to read bedtime stories to his newborn son, raising questions about Silicon Valley's growing obsession with automation.

Alvin Sng, a software engineer at San Francisco-based AI research lab Factory, shared the exchange with his wife in a now-deleted post on X, joking that 'parenting hits different when you work in AI'.

But what may have seemed like a clever technological workaround to Alvin Sng quickly became a flashpoint in the debate over AI parenting, with critics questioning why anyone would want to automate something as personal as reading to their own child.

'This Guy's Kids Will Outsource Him to AI: Critics Unleash Savage Comments

Social media users wasted no time, with many mocking it as a chilling glimpse of things to come. Some even imagined how such a casual embrace of automation could one day creep into family life, leaving loved ones to be replaced by an app.

One commenter wrote: ' claude on a fuckin wall-e is gonna be visiting this dude in the nursing home '

Another suggested the consequences could eventually come full circle, writing: 'It's going to be funny af if this guy gets old and his kids outsource all his desires for interaction/attention to an AI avatar instead of engaging with him because he taught them how to do it by doing shit like this'.

A third commenter sarcastically suggested that advances in robotics could take the idea even further: 'With working AI-driven robots, he doesn't even have to be around. What a timesaver!'

Another was less amused, writing: 'Like seriously, sometimes you can keep your dumb thoughts to yourselves'.

The comments reflect a wider frustration with the idea that every part of daily life needs to be made more efficient, even when the activity itself is an opportunity to spend meaningful time with another person.

For critics, the issue was not simply whether an AI-generated voice could tell a story. It was whether a parent should want a machine to take his place in the first place.

The AI Voice-Cloning Idea That Started It All

According to Fast Company, Sng described a conversation in which his wife asked him to read a book to their baby.

He reportedly suggested playing an audiobook instead. When his wife pointed out that it would not be in his own voice, he proposed another solution.

'Me: I can train a voice model,' he wrote, adding: 'Parenting hits different when you work in AI.'

It is worth noting that Sng only suggested training a voice model. Nothing in his post suggests he went on to create one, let alone use it to read bedtime stories to his child.

Nevertheless, the exchange struck a nerve because it captured an increasingly familiar feature of the AI boom: the instinct to find a technological solution to almost any problem.

AI tools can write emails, summarise documents, generate pictures and imitate human speech. Voice cloning, in particular, makes it possible to create synthetic speech that sounds like a specific person.

But reading a bedtime story is not necessarily a problem waiting to be solved. For many parents, it is a small but meaningful part of building a relationship with their child.

Why Reading to a Baby Is About More Than the Words

There is a reason health experts encourage parents to read aloud to children from an early age, even when they are too young to understand a story.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says shared reading can strengthen relationships between children and caregivers while supporting early language, cognitive and social-emotional development.

It is not simply about delivering words for a child to hear. Reading together creates opportunities for interaction, familiarity and comforting routines that can help build a sense of security.

An AI-generated recording might reproduce a parent's voice, but it cannot automatically reproduce the experience of a parent being present, responding to a child and sharing a moment with them.

That does not mean technology has no place in family life. Audiobooks and accessibility tools can be useful for busy parents and children with different needs. The question is whether AI should supplement those interactions or become a substitute for them.

Is Silicon Valley Trying To Automate the Human Experience?

Alvin Sng's deleted post and subsequent response have become part of a broader cultural argument over how artificial intelligence should fit into everyday life.

After the criticism, he returned to X a day later, writing: 'Ok, enough jokes for a while. I'll go back to reading bedtime stories for now.'

The episode also comes as concerns grow about children's exposure to AI. In September, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed new legislation strengthening safeguards for children using AI companion chatbots, including requirements for crisis protocols and parental controls.

Those rules address different risks from voice-cloned bedtime stories, but they underline the growing scrutiny of how AI interacts with young people.

But this isn't just about one dad's parenting joke. It makes you wonder about a tech world that's obsessed with making everything faster and easier: should some things, like reading to your own child, be left well alone?

If a machine can imitate a parent's voice, it may be able to deliver the story. But for many critics, the point was never just to hear the words. It was to have the parent there to read them.