Art Studio on Amazon Kids+

Art Studio is an interactive experience available through Amazon Kids+. To access Amazon Kids+, you must subscribe. Prime members can choose to subscribe monthly for £4.99/month or £38/year. If you are not a member of Amazon Prime, you can subscribe for £6.99/month or £68/year.

With Art Studio, kids can create works of art using both traditional digital art tools as well as generative AI. You can opt out of the generative AI.

Amazon Kids+ is available across compatible Amazon devices (Echo, Kindle, Fire tablet, and Fire TV). However, Art Studio is only available on the Fire tablet.

Parental controls on Art Studio

Because your child can only access Art Studio if you enable it via the Parent Dashboard, parental controls are naturally weaved into Art Studio.

When setting up Art Studio, you are given the following options:

• Turning AI-Assisted Art on or off: This feature is automatically on. If you don’t want your child using generative AI, you can turn this off so they can only create artwork with traditional art tools.
• Turning Photo Access on or off: This feature is automatically off but you can turn it on to let your child take and upload photos to Art Studio.

Art Studio uses generative AI to help children create digital art pieces. To give your child access, you must access your Parent Dashboard, either through browser on desktop or the app via your smartphone.

On the Parent Dashboard, navigate to Content > Amazon Kids+ Interactive Experiences and select Art Studio. Follow the on-screen instructions to give your child access.

Creating digital art

If you have AI-Assisted Art turned on, your child can enter a prompt. This could describe a scene or object, or be something as simple at ‘hot air balloon’. They can then pick a style that they want it to be in such as ‘3D Cartoon’ or ‘Anime’. Examples are available for each style to help guide them.

They can then ‘Magic Remix’ the image if they’re not happy with it. This gives them the chance to add more detail to their prompt to get closer to their vision. Alternatively, they can add it to the project they’re creating.

Your child can then use tools such as Draw, Background and Stickers to customise the AI-generated image. If you have Photo Access turned on, they can also access the Camera and Images features.

If you do not have AI-Assisted Art turned on, your child can still access the traditional features to create their own art. If they want to save their creation, they can download it to their tablet.

• An outlet for creativity, meaning time on devices is spent developing skills rather than just viewing or scrolling through content.
• For younger children, Art Studio can help them develop their fine motor skills required when selecting elements in the app or using the art tools.
• Children learn about different art styles and tools that can be applied to both digital art and traditional art.
• The opportunity to develop critical thinking skills that can help them safely interact with AI.
• Practise creating detailed prompts to get exactly what your child has in mind can help them learn that AI isn’t perfect and requires a lot of input from humans.

Data collection

When you first enable Art Studio, you need to provide parental permission for Amazon to ‘process and retain audio, interactions and other data in the cloud to provide and improve’ their services. If you do not enable this, your child won’t be able to use Art Studio.

You can see Amazon’s Children Privacy Notice to better understand how they process personal information they might collect from your child. This only applies to children under the age of 13.

To help keep your child’s online experiences positive, make sure they understand what their personal information is. Talk about the importance of keeping it private and not sharing it with anyone or on any app.

Overreliance on generative AI

Because Art Studio is designed for use by children, it has several safeguards in place to protect them from inappropriate content.

However, because generative AI can do so much, some children might only focus on that aspect of Art Studio rather than the options to practise their own creativity.

Encourage them to use the AI features as an ‘extra’ rather than the main part of their creation. Talk to them about what could be considered their art versus what would be AI art. This can help them think about AI more widely as well, helping them to become responsible users.

• Use Art Studio together: This can help you demonstrate different ways to write detailed prompts for AI generation. You can also show them how to use the non-AI tools.
• Challenge each other: Try setting goals for each other with the AI prompts to help them practise creating the best prompts possible.
• Ask them about their experience: What do they like about it? Is there anything that they find frustrating? This will help them remain mindful of their experiences and wellbeing.
• Check-in on their use of Art Studio: If they’re using it independently, make sure to keep checking in. Ensure that they’re creating appropriate images and not uploading risky pictures.
• Encourage use of other art tools: Try to keep them from only using Art Studio for AI-generation. Instead, encourage them to draw and create too.