Teller Family
Turn family photos into illustrated bedtime stories with AI.
Hypothesis
Personalized content is the next evolution in media. Media has gone from edited and linear, to recorded and saved, to recommended and shared. Personalization algorithms will give way to personalized content — content that features the viewer and their world. I'm not sure how much space it will take up, and professionally-created content will always dominate, just as linear still has its place today, but personalized content will continue to grow.
Timeline
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The Problem
Parents want to create personalized stories for their kids but don't have the time or illustration skills to make them special. Generic children's books can't include the child's own world — their pets, their house, their family.
The Solution
Teller Family lets parents upload family photos and generates fully illustrated, personalized bedtime stories. Each story features the child's real world reimagined through AI-generated illustrations matched to the narrative. In addition to uploading photos, parents can choose a reading level and a genre for the story. The genre effects the style of the illustrations.
How AI Is Used
A two-stage AI pipeline powers the experience. First, parents upload family photos that are sent to fal.ai to generate stylized illustrations — transforming real photos into story-ready artwork. Those illustrations are then analyzed by Claude to craft an age-appropriate narrative that weaves the illustrated scenes into a cohesive bedtime story. Once illustrations are generated, the original photos are deleted — they're never stored, in an effort to protect family privacy.
Tech Stack
Built as a cross-platform mobile app with a serverless backend and AI services orchestrating the story pipeline.
What I Learned
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