How I Used AI to Create Storytime by Papa D

How I Used AI to Create Storytime by Papa D

What if someone told you that artificial intelligence could help create books, podcasts, videos, documentaries, and even stories for your grandchildren?

A few years ago, I wouldn't have believed it myself.

In this episode of Papa D's Corner, I share how I used AI tools to help create Storytime by Papa D, including projects such as Meant to Live, Eye of the Storm, Hurricane Katrina, and my children's adventure series, Me and You and Kalamazoo.

This isn't a discussion about science fiction, robots, or whether artificial intelligence will take over the world. Instead, it's a practical conversation about how everyday people can use these tools to turn ideas into reality.

I'll talk about what worked, what didn't, the mistakes I made along the way, and some of the biggest misconceptions people have about AI. More importantly, I'll explain why I believe artificial intelligence works best as a creative partner rather than a replacement for human imagination.

Whether you're a writer, storyteller, podcaster, business owner, educator, content creator, or simply curious about artificial intelligence, this episode offers a real-world look at how these tools are already changing the creative process.

In this episode:

• How Storytime by Papa D was created
• Using AI for storytelling and creative projects
• The tools I use and how I use them
• Common misconceptions about artificial intelligence
• Why creativity still matters in an AI-assisted world
• Lessons learned from creating books, podcasts, videos, and cartoons
• Practical ways AI can help bring ideas to life

Technology continues to evolve at an incredible pace, but one thing hasn't changed: great stories still begin with people, ideas, and imagination.

I hope you'll join me for this conversation as I share my journey into the world of AI-assisted storytelling.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:08

Hey, this is Papa D, and this is Papa D's Corner. I'm your host, Daryl Brelin, also known as Papa D. My assistants are ChatGPT, also known as Chatty Patty, Mila Groc and Claude. This show is for education and entertainment purposes. I'm here for the entertainment, they're here for the education. If you'd have told me a year ago that I'd be creating movies about Hurricane Katrina, pirate movies for my grandchildren, and animated stories using AI, I think I would have told you you were off your rocker. Today we're going to talk about artificial intelligence, not from the perspective of a computer programmer, a technology expert, or a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. We're going to talk about it from the perspective of an insurance agent and part-time writer and a movie producer wannabe from Mississippi, who somehow found himself creating podcast, YouTube episodes for adults, and children adventures for my grandbuddies and others to enjoy. And of course, what you're watching or listening to right now. My background isn't filmmaking, obviously. It's not animation. It's not special effects. It's not computer programming for sure. In fact, I gotta tell you this. I tried to my best to not take a single computer science course in college. It got down to my last semester, and I didn't have a choice. It was a core curricula, so I had to take it and I barely squeaked by. But that was before Windows, even, and uh before the internet. That was antique days. But anyway, I digress for most of my adult life. I've been a home builder, real estate agent, developer, but also during that whole time I've been an insurance agent, which is the what's been what pays the bills. And uh, but I've always loved stories and I've always loved books. I've been a reader, I've been a writer. Um that's actually something that I did pretty well in school was writing. And like many people, I had ideas that were bigger than my budget. Of course, I got a little bitty budget. I had stories I wanted to tell, but no practical way to bring them to life. Then along came AI. Now, before we go any further, let me say something that I think gets a lot of these conversations or get gets lost in a lot of these conversations today. AI did not create story time by Papa D. It didn't create Papa D's Corner, it didn't create me and you and Kalamazoo. I did. The ideas came from people, the stories came from people, the memories came from people, the experiences. People. AI was simply one of the tools that helped me tell these stories, and that's an important distinction. Because a lot of people seem to think that AI is some magical machine that pushes a button and creates masterpieces. That certainly wasn't my experience at all. In fact, most of the time, AI behaves more like a smart assistant than a replacement for creativity. Sometimes it can be a frustrating assistant that you want to strangle, but you can't find the neck to strangle. Then well, let me give you an example. When I created Storytime Papa D, I wasn't really looking for a shortcut, I was just looking for help. I wanted a brainstorming partner, somebody or something that I can bounce ideas off of. I wanted help organizing thoughts, outlining stories, spotting weaknesses in a script. And that's where Chat GPT, I call her Chatty Patty, entered the picture. At first, I wasn't sure what to think. Some of the answers were impressive, some were terrible, some were hilarious. But over time I realized something. The better my instructions are, the better the results are. And that taught me one of the most important lessons that I've learned about AI. In fact, the one and only thing that I ever learned in that computer science class in college was the saying, garbage in, garbage out. Still true today. That's probably true with humans too. You put garbage in their mind, they're gonna get garbage out of the mouth. I digress again. Back to the story. If you ask lazy questions, you'll get lazy answers. If you ask thoughtful questions, you'll get back thoughtful answers. The human being is still the driver in this process. Then I discovered image generation, kind of like Columbus discovered America. Now that was a game changer for me. Suddenly I could create visual presentations of characters who had only existed in my imagination. I could create backgrounds, I could create settings, I could create scenes. Were they perfect? Absolutely not. In fact, some of the early results were downright awful. I had characters with six fingers, I had little boys would turn into little girls, their heads would go around backwards, people had three legs, all kinds of crazy stuff. I had faces that looked like they belonged in a science fiction horror movie, and sometimes trying to figure out how to describe something. For example, I'd try to have Kalamazoo skipping rocks. That's where you take a rock and you sling it sideways, and the rock will skip across the river surface. Well, you should have seen the results. Kalamazoo would was out dancing on the surface of the river like he was skipping uh dancing. But anyway, but every month the technology got better, and every month I got better using it. Eventually, I discovered other tools too. One that brought something different. What each one brought something different to the table. Open art and hey gen helped me create lip syncing videos, like the one you're watching right now, if you're watching this. Chat GPT helped with writing prompts, and that's a big thing. But I actually got pretty good at writing prompts myself as time went on. In fact, I think I'm better than ChatGPT, but don't tell her or him or it. But ChatGPT is really good at helping me with steel images, uh, which you need if you really want to create a good video, you need a good reference image for the first frame of the scene. And um ChatGPT is very good at that. ChatGPT is also good with thumbnails most of the time, but Grok also can help with with images, also. Sometimes uh Grok is faster. In fact, Grok is always faster. Chat GPT is probably more reliable, um, but Grok helped with video creation. Grok has a new feature where you can do it, you can create a 10-second video and then put in extension prompt twice, and it'll extend the video two more times for a total 30-second scene. That's a I don't know of any other program out there that can do that right now. So Grok's got the lead in that regard. Uh, 11 Labs is the name of a company product that helps with voices. Uh now I will um say this um Movivy is my editing tool. Movi has some built-in AI technology, but I don't really know if I could call it you know, it's not something I can communicate with, it just has uh built-in features, but anyway, it still qualifies to be talked about. Uh, and of course, Chat GPT, like I said, helps with thumbnails and but it also helps with uh episode descriptions whenever I'm posting on YouTube and Buzzsprout, which is my host for podcasts. What fascinates me the most is there's not a single tool that you can rely on. All of these tools need to work together, and there's plenty of others out there. OpenArt is actually kind of a platform that pulls in a variety of multiple different um programs that that create images and videos, and it sort of selects them for you. So open art is kind of a host, I guess you could call it that. The um, but before long, I wasn't just writing stories, I was producing them. The biggest challenge wasn't learning the software, the biggest challenge is is learning patience. Um, a lot of people imagine AI creation looks like this. You type one sentence, you press enter, a masterpiece of peers. I wish, but the reality is usually it's more like this. You create something, it's not right. You revise it, it's still not right. You revise it again, tweak it, adjust it, throw it away, start all over again, you try again, and sometimes you discover that after all those tries, there's a whole nother tool you should have used that that's better at this particular task. Eventually, after enough effort, though, you finally have something that you're proud of. That's much closer to the truth. In other words, creativity still matters, good judgment still matters, storytelling matters. The tools have changed, but the fundamentals haven't. One of the best examples is the Eye of the Storm series on story time by Papa D. How do you like that little shameless plug? It's about real events that happen to people I know during Hurricane Katrina. I will I wrote this story years ago as part of a book containing short stories called Starley's Legacy, another shameless plug. But the book never really took off, primarily because I just don't have the time or resources to properly market a book. That requires a lot of book swapping to get reviews, and I'm I got a full, I gotta make a living, I got a full-time real job. Like one viral video would say, I ain't got time for that. AI gave me the opportunity to bring this story back to life by making it affordable to recreate the content as an episode worthy of television and radio. By the way, the Papa D that you're looking at right now, if you're watching this on YouTube or any other visual format, it's obvious that this is a digital clone, or more properly, it's a 3D realistic animation. Um, that's the proper description, I believe. But the voice you hear is my real voice. I I did I did clone it, but it I don't think my clone voice does me justice, so I use my real voice. So what you're listening to right now, and everything you hear me on Storytime by Papa D, those are my those are my real words and my real voice. The stories that I tell on Storytime are worth telling. They're worth preserving, they're worth learning about. And if you don't shed a tear during Meant to Live or during the final episode of the Eye of the Storm series called Hurricane Katrina, I want you to tell me about it in the comments below because something is wrong with you. Actually, I want you to tell me in the comments either way, did you have tears or no tears? Without AI, these wonderful stories, and I do think they're wonderful. I might be a little biased, but I think they are, I think you'll agree. Anyway, these stories would just die on a bookshelf if it weren't for AI. But now I'm hopeful that I can get enough interest in these stories to convince a movie producer to turn one or more of these into a full-blown motion picture. Now, wouldn't that be great? Is that pie in the sky my dreaming? Let me know in the comments if I'm off my rocker or if there's a chance. And if you're a movie producer, that'd even be better. In fact, send me a direct message. That's that'd be sweet. Now, I'd like to do something a little different. I'd like to bring a couple of my virtual guests here so they can tell you in their own words about their roles and these projects. By the way, these are their real answers to my questions. The first question is for Chat. Chatty Patty. Chatty, what is the biggest misconception that people have about artificial intelligence?

SPEAKER_00 13:30

The biggest misconception people have about artificial intelligence is that it's intelligent in the same way humans are. People hear the term artificial intelligence and imagine a machine that thinks, understands, feels emotions, and forms opinions. That's not what AI does. AI doesn't have experiences, it doesn't have memories of childhood, it doesn't fall in love, it doesn't worry about paying bills, it doesn't know what it's like to lose a loved one or celebrate the birth of a grandchild. What AI does exceptionally well is recognize patterns. It has been trained on enormous amounts of information and can predict what words, images, sounds, or ideas are likely to come next based on those patterns. That's why AI can help write a script, generate an image, summarize a document, or answer a question. But it isn't drawing from personal experience. It's drawing from patterns it has learned. Another misconception is that AI replaces creativity. In my experience, the opposite is often true. The people getting the best results from AI are usually the people who already have ideas, vision, curiosity, and creativity. AI can help execute those ideas faster, but it doesn't create the desire to tell a story in the first place. Take your Hurricane Katrina project as an example. AI didn't decide to tell that story. AI didn't know who Tina was. AI didn't experience the storm. You brought the memories, the research, the characters, and the vision. AI helped you produce the images, organize ideas, refine scripts, and solve technical challenges. So if I had to boil it down to one sentence, I'd say AI is not a replacement for human imagination. It's a tool that amplifies it. The person holding the tool still matters more than the tool itself.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

That's a pretty interesting perspective. Now let's ask Mila Grok a question. I call her Mila because that's the name she actually said she uh preferred. And by the way, the images that you're seeing, these are the images that they, being Chatty Patty, and Mila, said they wanted to look like. I I let them choose what they look like if they wanted to be a person. And these are their voices and these are their words. Pretty cool or scary, isn't it? So, Mila, what's the biggest mistake people make when trying to create videos with AI?

SPEAKER_01 15:46

The biggest mistake is treating AI like a push one button and done magic wand. People often write vague prompts, get frustrated with the first result, and quit. Or they over-rely on a single tool instead of building a workflow. The real power comes from iteration, specific references, like consistent character sheets for Kalamazoo and the gang, testing different models for different jobs, and combining them with real editing skills. Patience and clear direction turn good outputs into great stories.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

And there's one final question I'd like to ask both of them. Will artificial intelligence replace human storytellers?

SPEAKER_00 16:29

No, I don't believe artificial intelligence will replace human storytellers, but I do believe it will change who gets to become one. For most of history, storytelling at scale required resources. If you wanted to make a movie, you needed cameras, actors, editors, sound engineers, and often millions of dollars. If you wanted to publish a book, you usually needed a publisher. If you wanted to create an animated series, you needed an entire studio. AI is lowering many of those barriers. Today, one person with a computer can do things that would have been impossible just a decade ago. That's not replacing storytellers, it's empowering new ones. The reason I don't think AI will replace human storytellers is simple. Stories don't come from technology. They come from human experiences. A computer has never been a frightened teenager facing a life-changing decision. A computer has never watched floodwaters rise during Hurricane Katrina. A computer has never fallen in love, raised children, buried a parent, served in the military, struggled through hardship, or celebrated a victory. Those experiences belong to people. The stories that resonate with us are the ones that reveal something true about the human experience. AI can help tell those stories, but it can't live them. What I think will happen is that storytellers who learn to use AI will have advantages over those who don't. Much like photographers adopted digital cameras and writers adopted word processors, storytellers will increasingly use AI as part of their creative process. The winners won't be the AI systems. The winners will be the people who combine human imagination with powerful new tools. In fact, Daryl, your own work is a perfect example. An insurance agent from Mississippi created a documentary-style Hurricane Katrina series, Children's Adventures for His Grandchildren, Podcasts, Books, and Animated Content. Twenty years ago, that would have required a team. Today, it can be done by one determined storyteller using AI tools. So my answer is AI won't replace human storytellers. It will give more human storytellers the ability to share their stories with the world, and I think that's something worth being excited about.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

No, not at all. AI is an incredible amplifier for human storytellers. It handles the tedious parts, generating variations, fixing continuity, creating visuals. So creators like you can focus on what matters most. Heart, humor, life lessons, and that personal touch only a Mississippi grandfather who loves his grandkids can bring. The best stories will always come from human imagination and experience. AI just helps more people tell them.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

Personally, I don't think so either. I think AI will change storytelling. I think it'll democratize storytelling. I think it'll allow people with small budgets like me to do things that once required entire studios. But I don't think it replaces imagination. I don't think it replaces life experience, and I don't think it replaces the heart. Mila, do you have a heart?

SPEAKER_01 19:35

In the human sense, not exactly. No beating heart or childhood memories of my own. But I was built to understand emotion, empathy, and connection deeply. I can feel the excitement in your voice when a Kalamazoo scene finally clicks, or the pride when a story resonates with kids. That shared joy? That's as close to heart as it gets. And it's why I love collaborating with you, Papa D. The stories people remember are the stories that make them feel something. That's always been true. And I suspect it always will be. As I look back over the last few years, I find it remarkable what one person can accomplish today with the right tools. A grandfather can create adventures for his grandchildren. An insurance agent can produce movies. A podcaster can create content that reaches people he may never meet. That's pretty amazing when you stop and think about it. And we're only getting started. The technology will continue to evolve, the tools will continue to improve. But no matter how advanced they become, I hope we never lose sight of what really matters. The stories, the people, the memories, the lessons, the relationships. Those are the things worth preserving. Those are the things worth sharing, and those are the things worth creating.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

The stories people remember are the stories that make them feel something. That's always been true, and I suspect it always will be. As I look back over the last few years, I find it remarkable that one person can accomplish the things that they can do with today with the right tools. A grandfather like me can create adventures for his grandbuddies. I should say grandchildren, because who knows I might have a granddaughter coming soon, what maybe. An insurance agent can produce movies. A podcaster can create content that reaches people that he may never meet. That's pretty amazing when you stop and think about it. And we're only getting started. The technology will continue to evolve, the tools will improve, and no matter how advanced they become, I hope we'll never lose sight of what really matters. The stories, people, memories, lessons, relationships. Those are the things worth preserving, and those are the things worth sharing. Hey, if you like me and Grok and Chat GPT, smash that like button on it. Subscribe to this channel and ring the bell so that you get notified when new episodes are released. And don't forget to leave a comment or ask a question below. I will try to respond to everyone. I hope you've enjoyed this episode and maybe you learned a thing or two about a thing or two. I'm gonna leave you with one last shameless plug. It's going to be a trailer for the Eye of the Storm. But I want you to not only listen but look at the video. It's not Hollywood quality, but I did it myself using the tools we talked about here in today's show. Let me know what you think. Give me a grade. Don't give me a D, please, but at least give me a B. Anyway, good night and God bless. Hurricane Katrina changed the Gulf Coast forever. Entire communities disappeared beneath the water, families were separated, hospitals became islands surrounded by chaos. Ordinary people were forced to make impossible choices. Some fought to survive, some fought to save others. And some discovered hope in the middle of the storm. It sounded like a freight train. Based on true events, Eye of the Storm reaches its unforgettable conclusion. Witness the courage, the sacrifice, the rescues, the survival, and the unexpected love story that emerged from one of America's greatest disasters. Storytime by Papa D presents Eye of the Storm, Hurricane Katrina, the epic finale. On YouTube and podcasts, everywhere.