How we make books

A brand-new picture book, made just for your child. Here's exactly how.

Personalised StoryLink books are written and illustrated by AI. We'd rather say that plainly than dress it up. So here is what you type, who writes it, who paints it, how every page is checked before your child sees it, and what happens to your family's photos afterwards. (This page is about the paid books. The live story calls and the 300+ book library are free.)

The feeling we are after, painted for this page: a dragon lifting off an open book. The real StoryLink illustrations are further down.
The making of a book

Five stops between a few taps and tonight's story.

  1. 01

    You tell us the story

    Who's it for? How old are they? A bedtime tale, an adventure, something funny? Add the characters, maybe a shy little dragon and a brave mouse, or start from a real family memory, or a few of your own photos. Your child's name and age shape every page.

    Recorded in the real app: where a book begins.
  2. 02

    An AI writes the words

    The story is written by Anthropic's AI, guided by our own instructions for gentle, age-appropriate storytelling, with your child's name and age shaping every page. If Anthropic is ever unavailable, a backup writer from a different company steps in, so bedtime isn't cancelled.

  3. 03

    Google's AI paints every page

    Each page is illustrated in a warm watercolour storybook style by Google's Gemini. Every book page you see on this site is a real, untouched StoryLink illustration. Characters stay consistent from cover to final page, so the hero looks like their hero the whole way through.

    Isla and the Smallest Star, a real StoryLink cover illustration. Ruby's Picnic by the River, a real StoryLink cover illustration.
    Real, untouched StoryLink illustrations.
  4. 04

    An independent AI checks every page

    Before your child sees anything, every word and every picture passes an automated safety check. The words are always checked by a different company's AI than the one that wrote them, and so are the pictures, unless that checker is having an outage, in which case a second model steps in rather than none. And if no check can be completed at all, the book is not shown. It fails closed, never open. The finished book also comes to you first, so you can read it before they do.

  5. 05

    It lands in your family's library

    Minutes later the finished book is yours: read it live at Story Time with the pages turning on both screens, record it in your own voice, or let read-to-me narrate. Private to your family, forever.

    The family library, made-for-you books included.
Where the book ends up

Then bedtime happens, on both screens.

These are screen recordings of real story calls in the real app, reading a made-for-you book.

You turn the page, their page turns too.
Tap magic, and the page comes alive.
Our promises

What we never do

The fine print, in plain English: the same promises made in our Privacy Policy, which is the legally binding version.

Photos

Photos are deleted after the book is made

A photo you choose for a photo story is uploaded over an encrypted connection, used once, then deleted from our servers as soon as the book is finished, with an automatic 24-hour cleanup as a backstop. Where the photo was taken is stripped out before it is uploaded. It is never posted anywhere, and nobody outside your family can see it.

Voices

Voices aren't kept

A child's Star Story voice recording is transcribed, then deleted straight away. Live story-time calls are never recorded.

Training

No AI training on your family

Your stories, photos and recordings are processed only to make your books. Our AI providers don't use them to train their models.

Privacy

Private to your family

Books, recordings and reading history are visible to your family only, locked by security rules no other family can cross. StoryLink is run from Australia, and your family's data is stored with Google in Australia and the United States. It's all set out in the Privacy Policy.

Ads

No ads, no data selling

Ever. Our only business is families paying for the books they love.

Deletion

Delete everything, any time

One tap in the app removes your family's profiles, books, recordings and history. Your data is yours.

I'm a dad first. The magic should be in the story, never in what happens to your family's data.

StoryLink · Moreton Bay, Queensland

Ready when you are

Read one for yourself

StoryLink is free to download. The story calls and the library cost nothing; personalised books are there when you want one.

Download free on the App Store

Free on the App Store · Australia and New Zealand