How we use AI

Our position

We think people have a right to know whether what they are looking at was made by a person. So we would rather say it plainly than leave you guessing.

Nothing in The Woo Cycle was generated by artificial intelligence. Not the story, not the characters, not a single illustration.

How the book was made

Every illustration in The Woo Cycle was hand drawn by our illustrator Maia Moore over 18 months. Woo, Lina, her mum and every background you see in the book exist because somebody sat down and drew them.

The story was written by Marlou Cornelissen with her daughter James, and shaped by conversations with families, carers, educators and children. The words came from those conversations, not from a model.

This website

The illustrations and backgrounds on this site are the same hand-drawn artwork from the book, used with permission. We do not use AI-generated images, and we do not use AI-generated stock photography of children.

Where the site uses software tools to help build and maintain it, that is ordinary web development. It does not change the fact that the artwork and the writing are human work.

AI in our wider work

Like most small charities we use everyday software, some of which now includes AI features. We hold ourselves to three commitments:

• we do not use generative AI to create the creative work at the heart of The Woo Cycle, meaning the illustrations, the characters and the story
• we do not put personal information about our community, our supporters or the children and families we work with into public AI tools
• if we ever publish anything that was materially produced with AI, we will say so on the item itself

If you would like to know more about how we work, please just ask us at hello@periodreality.org.

Why this matters to us

We are a small charity publishing a picture book for children about their own bodies. The trust of the parents, carers and teachers who read it with a child is the most valuable thing we have.

AI-generated imagery is becoming more common every month, and much of it is very good. We are not against the technology. We simply believe that a book which asks children to be curious about something real should itself be made by people who care about it, and that you should be able to find that out easily.