You are working on a blog about how your company has achieved a new milestone. You look up stock images of “people celebrating in their office” to go along with your positive, inspiring article. As you browse through the results, you think, “Geez, these photos look too bland, cliche, and just like all stock photos!”
We get you. Stock photos are boring. Your readers don’t even pay attention to them, and they convey nothing about the blog you’ve written. At best, they break up the text and fill out the page. They are the visual representation of “lorem ipsum” and <your text here>.
But what if you could create your own blog images by giving specific prompts to AI image generators?
What’s The Buzz Around AI Image Generators?
AI image generators are generative models whose algorithms use artificial intelligence techniques to generate images based on a prompt. First, you give these tools a prompt. Then, they learn from vast datasets of existing images to create new visuals that resemble photographs, artwork, or graphics.
Since you’re in charge of the prompt, you can write almost anything. That means even if you have the most specific requirements, you can ask the tool to create one for you.
Images created by generative AI are unique (unlike free stock photos) and free to use for non-commercial purposes.
For example, stock photos of people celebrating in an office look like this:
Now let us use DALL-E, OpenAI’s popular image generation tool, to create a better image. When asked to draw “a picture of employees celebrating in an office, in an oil painting style,” this was one of the many results:
More interesting than the fluorescent, cookie-cutter stock images.
Let us try one more. This is from Craiyon.
How Well Do These AI Image Generators Work?
At Ukti, we create a lot of content for our blog and social media accounts. To enhance our visual appeal, we do what all content marketers do – add the right images.
We happen to be a small team. So, our writers double as graphic designers and create blog banners, blog images, infographics, LinkedIn post images, LinkedIn carousels, Instagram posts, etc. We rely on free image-making tools like Canva, get free stock photos from Unsplash, and use meme templates. None of us knows our way around Photoshop.
So naturally, we had to test out free AI art generators for content marketing.
Here are four use cases we selected, and here’s how the tools fared. We’ve given our verdict for each one – Hit or Miss.
#1 Using AI image generators for creating blog banners
Yes, you can absolutely use AI to create unique designs for your blog banners. In fact, the banner image of this blog has been generated by DALL-E and then edited with Canva to add a bit of text.
The prompt used was “Salvador Dali looking confused in front of a computer, surrounded by art supplies, in the vaporwave style.”
And here are the results:
After trying a few variations, this is the image we thought worked best. Notice the distinctive line of coloured pixels at the bottom right corner from DALL-E.
If you don’t always want to give a detailed description or you prefer simple banner images over quirky ones, you can try this trick. First, use any AI image generator tool to generate a background image.
For example, here, I used DALL-E to generate “an image with multiple tiny robot heads in 8-bit style.” This can be used for any tech blog.
Verdict
This one is a hit.
#2 Using AI to generate images highlighting quotes
You probably use an image editing tool like Canva to create quote banners. Can you let go of the dragging and dropping, selecting fonts and colours, and let AI do it for you? Let us find out.
Let us use Canva AI, DALL E, and Craiyon to turn this quote into a banner image:
“Keep Calm and Carry On”
The prompt for each tool: Write the words ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ in Arial font, in red, on a yellow background.
This is DALL-E’s result.
And this ‘Text to Image’ from Canva AI image generation.
And these are the results from Craiyon. It does look surreal, but nowhere close to the prompt we gave them.
Verdict
This one is a total miss. It is much easier to use a traditional image editing tool (or even an online quote banner generator) for this purpose.
#3 Create a sample image to help your graphics team get started.
If AI can’t do it perfectly, treat its output as a first draft. Give the AI image generator’s work to your graphic designer, and tell them to improve upon it.
While this sounds like “double the work,” it can sometimes work out. One of the most common pet peeves of graphic designers is that they often fail to understand the “text” brief because it isn’t specific enough. So, you can either tell your team, “Hey, I need an image of a boy on a bicycle, holding a red balloon.” Or you can give this prompt to an AI image generator, pick an image whose composition you like, and ask your team to refine the output.
These are some outputs from Canva’s AI image generator. They’ll do as the first draft.
Verdict
Try it out and let us know!
One Last Thing: Can Anyone Use AI-Generated Images Freely?
As of 2023, AI-generated images are free to use for non-commercial purposes. Who ‘owns’ these images differs among tools.
For example, this is what Canva AI says:
OpenAI’s DALL-E also has no copyright claims as of 2023
Free AI art generator Craiyon also says its images are free to use:
Just to be safe, make sure you read the terms of use and privacy policy before you publish any images created by generative AI. Enjoy creating content in the AI era!