Splat’s app uses AI to turn your photos into coloring pages for kids

The team of Retro, a photo sharing app for close friends and family, experiments with how generative AI can be used more creatively. To try out the latest, cutting-edge AI technologies, the team built a new app called Splatwhich allows you to turn any photo into a coloring book page for kids.

As any parent will tell you, children love to color. And thanks to the Internet, there are a seemingly endless number of coloring book pages available to print at home.

However, many of the websites that host these pages are filled with ads and other junk, making them difficult to navigate. Other times, the printable pages are only available for a small fee, which some parents are unwilling to pay given the disposable nature of many of children’s penned art projects.

That inspired the team at Retro to develop an app that lets you print coloring book pages at home — from your own photos or photos it offers in kid-friendly, educational categories, like animals, space, flowers, fairy tales, robots, cars and more.

To get started with Splat, take a photo or choose a photo from your camera roll. Then you can choose which style of photo you want to color, such as anime, 3D movie, manga, cartoon or comic. The app then uses AI to transform your photo into an on-screen page or a printable page that kids can color.

Rather than requiring a laborious sign-up process, the app will walk you through the customization options the first time you start creating. Here you will be asked to choose your preferred app icon and check the different categories that your child likes. You can also choose whether you want your kids to color the photo as a printable page or on screen (great if kids are bored but you don’t want them to get sucked into a TV or game).

You can try one generative AI project to get a feel for the app. It then costs $4.99 per week or $49.99 per year to keep generating new photos. The weekly option allows 25 pages per week and the annual option allows 500 pages per year. The option to purchase or access the settings is blocked for small children by a pop-up requiring the parent’s year of birth.

In short tests, the app worked as promised and the generation time was short, allowing you to quickly go from idea to print, ready for coloring, cutting out, or whatever your child wants to do.

Splat is one of many experiments using generative AI to stimulate children’s creativity and imagination in new ways. Another, Stickerbox, offers printed, AI-generated stickers for colors, while Casio also has a fluffy robot pet named Moflin that uses AI to develop its personality over time.

Splat is available on Splat is available on iOS And Android.