How Memolio Works

From photos and memories to a printed watercolour book — in four steps.

Memolio turns the photos and stories you already have into a personalised book for grandparents. You share a handful of photos and answer a short questionnaire. AI writes a narrative around those memories and illustrates every page in warm watercolour. You review the full book online and fix anything that's off — up to 50 regenerations, all free. Then we print and ship a hardcover. Total time from start to delivery is roughly two weeks, and you see every page before anything prints.

The Four Steps

1. Share your photos and stories

   Answer a short questionnaire on WhatsApp or the web. Upload photos of the grandparent across different ages, plus optional photos of a partner or grandchildren. Share the memories worth capturing — how they met, where they've lived, what they love. The whole intake takes about 20 minutes.

2. AI creates your book

   30 minutes to 2 hours. GPT writes a narrative from your answers, a vision model learns the faces from your photos, and Seedream 4.5 paints every page in warm watercolour. Each illustration is generated from the photos you shared, so the grandparent (and anyone else who appears) looks like themselves on every page, not a generic character.

3. Review and perfect it

   You see the full book online before anything prints. AI isn't perfect, and people's stories matter — so you get up to 50 free regenerations. If a page isn't right — wrong outfit, wrong scene, typo, a likeness that's a bit off — tap the page, tell us what to change, and we re-render it. Keep going until you're happy.

4. Your hardcover arrives

   Once you approve the book, we send it to our EU print partner. A 24-page full-colour hardcover on archival paper ships within 7–14 business days across the EU and UK. You own the physical book and the full digital master — we never resell or republish it.

How Does the AI Generate Illustrations From My Photos?

The short version: a vision model reads the photos to learn what the grandparent looks like — face shape, hair, build, approximate age at each life stage — and then an illustration model paints each page using that likeness as a reference. We use Seedream 4.5 (via BytePlus, Singapore) for illustration generation and OpenAI's GPT for the story text.

What this means in practice: the grandparent on page 3 looks like the grandparent on page 15. The wedding scene features the real partner. The grandchildren in the garden scene actually look like the real grandchildren. This continuity is the hard part — Memolio's pipeline is built around getting it right on every page, and around letting you fix any page that still drifts.

What's in the Book?

A standard Memolio book is a hardcover, roughly 24 pages, with a watercolour illustration and a short paragraph of narrative on each spread. The structure typically covers: childhood, the years they became themselves, meeting a partner, children arriving, the grandchild's arrival, and a final page addressed to the grandchild. You can also request specific pages — a memorable trip, a favourite place, a proudest moment.

Every book also includes a dedication page written by the grandchild (or whoever is ordering). If you'd like help writing it, Memolio can draft one from the questionnaire answers and let you edit it.

What If a Page Doesn't Look Right?

AI generation is powerful but not perfect. Sometimes a likeness drifts. Sometimes a scene reads wrong. Memolio includes a review step before anything prints so you catch this at the only point where it matters.

On the review page, you flick through every spread. If something's wrong, tap the page and tell us what to change. The change goes through the same pipeline and the page re-renders. You keep re-rendering until you're happy, and only then do we send the book to print.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does Memolio take from start to delivery?

About two weeks in total: around 20 minutes for the questionnaire, 30 minutes to 2 hours for the AI to generate your book, a day or two for you to review and request changes, then 7–14 business days for printing and shipping (depending on your country).

Can I change things after the AI has generated the book?

Yes. You review every page before it prints. If something's wrong — a face looks off, the scene is wrong, the text has a typo — tell us what to change and we re-render that page. Most people make a handful of changes; a few make none.

How many photos do I need to upload?

A minimum of three clear photos of the grandparent: one from younger life (roughly twenties), one from later life (roughly fifties–seventies), and one recent. Photos of a partner or grandchildren are optional but make the book noticeably richer. More photos is always better than fewer.

Is the book in English or German?

Both. Memolio is built bilingually from the start. You pick the language at the questionnaire stage — the whole book is written natively in that language. It's not a translation of an English template; the German version is written by an LLM operating in German end-to-end.

Who owns the finished book?

You do. You own the physical hardcover and the digital master. Memolio never resells or republishes your book, and we don't use your photos or stories to train AI models.

What happens to my photos afterwards?

Photos are deleted from our image host 90 days after book delivery. Order and book records are anonymised on the same schedule. Full details are in the privacy policy.