Show HN: AfriTales – Discover the Magic of African Storytelling (opens in new tab)

In early childhood someone gave me a storybook of African tales. Anansi, Legba, others I have long since forgotten. Every time I hear that the continent is not properly represented in film, and how some European tale needs to be Africanised I'm reminded of how lazy and risk averse Hollywood is. There are a hundred tales that could be told from the continent, genuinely novel and unlike anything you've read before.

> The stories are created to cover north, south, west and east Africa.

Are these actually African folktales? The video seems to demonstrate only the LLM generation.

Very nice but the fonts render as white on white background on my phone which makes it difficult to read. Screenshot: https://ibb.co/29CqpTx

The contact buttons at the bottom of the web page (email, "global community," and a phone icon) do nothing: they're just span elements in divs. There's a "Twitter" link instead of "X," and it links to "@afritales," which doesn't exist.

As others have pointed out, the web page promises "cultural heritage" and "authentic stories from Africa," but the demo shows AI slop. If you're offering both, then that needs to be made more clear: highlight the authentic stories, and then make clear that users have an option to AI-generate more stories like them. If you're offering only AI-generated stories (and your words "the stories are created to cover…" make that sound possible), you need to be forthright about that, because you'll be called out, with righteous indignation, for selling AI slop as if it were a particular people's cultural legacy.

Also, speaking of "particular people," if you actually want to do something good with this project, make the provenance of each story clear and specific: not just "African," not just "West African," but "a tale from a Wolof griot, collected by Birago Diop." Africa is the largest continent of all, and its cultures are many and diverse with many different storytelling traditions.

Website says "Professional narration," but then the demo plays AI-generated audio?

The Kikuyu fairy tale "The Warrior And The Irimũ" contains the line "I should like to teach you the dance of my people."

https://archive.org/stream/mananth13a14royauoft/mananth13a14... (1913)

I am going to piggyback and drop an interesting bit of trivia: Enid Blyton's infamous Brer Rabbit is actually an African-American. Look it up.

The oral tradition is important because of the stories it passes on. The stories themselves are the thing.

How do you square this with this feature you've added where LLMs can generate slop that has no resonance for anyone? It would seem to be at odds with the purpose of the tradition you're building your business around.

So i have, oh, just a couple thoughts:

I was intrigued by the headline, but interest dropped off quickly when I realized that the whole thing seems to be about LLM generated "stories".

Honestly, I would have loved to read some genuine african tales, but I really don't care about reading LLM slop, much less do I intend to pay for such a service.

...and you compensate writers how exactly? Be specific please. Cultural exploitation no matter the nationality or ethnicity or race, in my opinion, is a worthwhile debate. If you're compensating African Writers at a higher rate than the industry that's a selling point. If on the other hand you're hiding a model where you take advantage of African Writers under the guise of promoting their work and career while you profit from them, then that's a valid reason to cheer for your enterprise to fail. Which is it?

Sorry OP, but honestly? This just seems like AI slop, like someone took interesting folk tales and vibe coded generic LLM and TTS around them to make a buck. Nothing ruins the magic of storytelling like the shallow cynicism of lazy capitalism.

I'd rather just see a Gutenberg collection of African folk tales than this...