Mark Zuckerberg Sparks Debate After Using AI To Illustrate His Young Daughter's Book

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg divided the internet by using AI to bring his six-year-old daughter August's illustrations to life.

Zuckerberg posted a video of his presentation at the annual Connect conference explaining how he and his second daughter used Meta AI to illustrate and create a trailer for her book, The Mermaid Crystal.

"And yes, a sequel is already in the works. Proud dad!" wrote Zuckerberg in an Instagram post, which you can see here.

The accompanying trailer showed digitally rendered images of a mermaid named Bella who is scared of humanity.

A voice narrates how Bella's life changes with an unexpected encounter with two children from a different world. The trailer concludes with the narrator inviting us to join them for "A tale of friendship, adventure, and the magic that connects us all."

Despite its cute premise, social media users weren't impressed by the Zuck's promotion of AI over human illustrators.

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People continued criticizing the AI art.

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Others, however, praised August's creation, helped by what they thought was a useful tool.

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But a good majority stood their ground in protest.

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Zuckerberg and his pediatrician and philanthropist wife, Priscilla Chan, have three daughters, Maxima Chan Zuckerberg, born on December 1, 2015, August, born in August 2017, and Aurelia, born on March 24, 2023.

He recently joined the elusive $200 billion club after growing his fortune by $73.4 billion this year to $201 billion, making Zuckerberg the fourth richest person in the world.

The Meta CEO is gaining in on Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk ($272 billion); Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ($211 billion); and LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault ($207 billion), according to the figures shown in Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.