How to use AI creatively and safely with children: the D.I.R.E.C.T. rules, the age limit of each tool, our slides, and a free AI Story Studio workshop.
By Robocode. For schools and groups, 10 October 2026, 5 min read
More than half of 8 to 17 year olds in the UK have used AI, according to Ofcom's report of May 2026. Among 16 and 17 year olds it is two in three. The question for anyone who works with children is no longer whether they will use it. It is who is in charge when they do.
This piece goes with our table talk at the Solihull Cultural Education Partnership Tea Party on 23 October 2026. The slides are further down, and so is the free workshop we offered at the end.
Consuming, generating, directing
A child watching a video is consuming. A child who types "draw me a dragon" and takes whatever comes back is generating. A child who decides the dragon wants to be a chef is directing. They rewrite the line that falls flat, and redraw the picture until it matches the story in their head.
Only the last one owns the work. A child who can only prompt is still a consumer of someone else's judgement. That idea sits behind everything we teach, and it fits an arts setting naturally: you already teach drafting, critique and editing. AI is one more tool in that process.
It was your idea… A.I just took it out your head and put it onto paper for you.
A member of Children's Parliament, from workshops with children aged 9 to 11 (2025)
The Alan Turing Institute's research found children mostly use generative AI for creative things: pictures, stories and play. The same children still preferred paint, paper and their own hands. So AI works best inside the making, as one of the tools on the table.
Directing starts long before AI: a Robocoder at the green screen in one of our Studio Labs.Can you spot the AI?
At the table we show two photos of a robot car on a pink race track. One is from our Forza workshop in May. The other was made by AI in under a minute. Plenty of people pick the wrong one.
Ofcom tested teenagers this year. Of 13 to 17 year olds, 52% said they were confident spotting AI images, and a quarter were confident and still got the test wrong. The tells are small: AI is suspiciously tidy. Real life has a hand in the shot, a scuffed mat and a bit of mess.
D.I.R.E.C.T.: six rules a ten-year-old can remember
- D: decide the idea yourself. The young person picks the story, the song or the character. AI comes second.
- I: instruct the AI clearly. Who, where and what mood. Vague in, vague out.
- R: review everything it gives you. Is it right? Is it kind? Is it ours? AI can be confidently wrong.
- E: edit it until it's yours. Change the words, redraw the picture, cut what doesn't fit.
- C: credit the AI honestly. Say what the AI did and what you did. No famous characters passed off as your own.
- T: take care of personal information. No real names, school names, addresses, photos or voices go into an AI tool.
They sit comfortably beside a school's online safety policy, and they are the same rules our own Mentors work to. If you are a school, our safeguarding page for schools sets out what your safeguarding lead will ask us for.
Check the age before the tool
Every AI tool sets its own minimum age, and they differ more than most people expect. As of October 2026:
- ChatGPT: 13 and over, with a parent's or guardian's permission under 18.
- Gemini: 13 and over, with their own or a school Google account. Not available to under-13s in the UK.
- Canva's AI tools: 13 and over, or younger inside Canva for Education when a teacher invites and supervises them.
- Adobe Firefly: the free web tools ask users to confirm they are 18 or over. School accounts have Firefly switched on by default.
- Claude: 18 and over.
For schools, Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 came into force on 1 September. It names AI-made explicit images and harmful AI conversations as risks. It also points schools to the Department for Education's product safety standards for generative AI, updated in January 2026.
The risk is already in the room. The UK Safer Internet Centre asked 8 to 12 year olds about it this year. One in seven (14%) had seen people their age use AI to make rude or inappropriate pictures of someone else.
That is why, in our workshops, a Mentor runs the laptop and the children direct. They make every creative decision; the adult holds the account.
The slides
Slide 1 of 13
Thirteen slides from our table talk at the Solihull CEP Tea Party, 23 October 2026. Download the slides (PDF)PowerPointWere you at our table? Tell us what you thought. It takes two minutes, and it is also where you can book the workshop below.
Try the AI Story Studio with your group
The demo at the table is our AI Story Studio. The group picks an idea, casts a hero, and chooses a mood and a setting. The AI drafts four scenes, and the group reads them aloud and rewrites anything that isn't right.
Nothing is drawn until the group ticks three boxes: it makes sense, it's kind, and it says what we want. Then the pictures arrive, and the group redraws any that miss. A narrator voice reads the film, and the credits say who made the choices.
From a test run: Sprocket and the Rooftop Feast, drawn with AI to the group's directions.We run it free for groups. It lasts 90 minutes, suits ages 8 to 17, and each pair directs its own illustrated story and takes the storybook home.
Sources
- Ofcom, Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report, 21 May 2026.
- The Alan Turing Institute, Understanding the Impacts of Generative AI Use on Children, 2025.
- Children's Parliament, Generative A.I Use and Children's Rights, 2025.
- Department for Education, Generative AI: product safety standards, updated 19 January 2026.
- Department for Education, Keeping children safe in education 2026, in force from 1 September 2026.
- UK Safer Internet Centre, Safer Internet Day 2026 research, February 2026.
- Minimum ages from the current terms of OpenAI, Google, Canva, Adobe and Anthropic, checked October 2026.