I’m excited to share a project I’m working on called BookLed.
BookLed is a hardcover paper book, containing electronic hardware, designed for experimenting new ways of storytelling using Generative AI.
With a BookLed, a Python code and an OpenAI API account you can explore the world of AI storytelling starting from the pages of a paper book!
In the BookLed GitHub repository , examples of Python and Jupyter Notebook open-source codes are collected to explore interfacing this paper book with OpenAI APIs.
So, connecting BookLed to your PC and launching a Jupyter Notebook, the Python code identifies the book’s page and delivers the multimedia content synchronized with the turning of the pages:
Soundtrack of the book.
Contents generated through the indications of a prompt.
currently, there are two ways to interact with the paper book:
Turn the pages to navigate forward or backward through the story.
Use a small navigation switch to, for example, answer YES/NO questions posed by the LLM.
The original project envisioned additional interaction methods, but these have not been implemented yet in order to keep the overall hardware cost low.
The current version of BookLed is designed for makers and AI enthusiasts who want to experiment with generative AI integrated with very low-cost hardware.
Therefore, it is assumed that the BookLed user is quite experienced, has their own OpenAI API account, and knows how to write their API key to an .env file within the Python environment.
As such, the API key is stored in the Python environment and not within the book itself.
If the BookLed project were to reach the general public, the management of API keys and the pricing/billing model would need to be reconsidered and made more user-friendly.
Since you’re a writer too, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this new narrative model I’m proposing.
In BookLed, there are two components:
A “fixed” and immutable part, which is the content printed on paper (created by the writer).
A “dynamic” and modifiable part, which is the content generated in real-time by the generative AI.
The AI is constrained by a predetermined path, dictated by the narrative printed on the pages.
While the story’s framework remains unchanged, the AI can interpret and present it in infinitely diverse ways.
What are your thoughts?
Over the next month, I will continue experimenting and look forward to the new GPT-4o APIs to further enhance the interaction with the BookLed.
It was just a thought on top of my mind that it could be nice to have an interaction between the reader and the content on the book as you go through the pages, such as with the reader making a comment or asking a question and the model then providing some additional response.
Based on the picture it looked like this was a children’s book. As parents often read books together with their children and interact on the content, the model responses could further enrich this interaction perhaps.
Hi jr.2509,
thanks for sharing your ideas with me. I really appreciate it very much.
With the APIs available at the moment, waiting for the truly multimodal gpt-4o API, I could test the interaction you propose with a code represented in the following diagram:
Hi Khaled,
at this moment we are still in the initial phase of the journey
We are writing the Business Plan of our company and we are starting to face practical problems. For example, the OpenaAI TTS model costs 15$ per million characters! It is a lot and with these costs a product like ours is not sustainable. We are looking for TTS that cost less or we are evaluating the idea of doing text-to-speech within our SW with some appropriate library…
Hi,
as soon as the product will be available to the public (that is, as soon as we can complete the infrastructure) I will let you know right away.
I saw that you have started selling your book on Amazon!
I see also your web at bridgeofbits.ai
Is the content of the book similar to the web content?
