First of all, as a graphic designer I am always keen on new technology and how this new “art trend” can add to our field new opportunities. Right now Ai image generator sites are popping like mushrooms. And so are the bloggers or even YouTubers that are promising you the moon. “So easy to make money, make it now, start selling today…”. Ok lets leave the moon aside for a minute and let’s get down to earth.

What is Ai image generators? For the ones that are new to this technology these apps create for you a new image generated on older images that already exist.

How do you do it?

With a simple text input where you are just describing to the input field what you want example ” a cat watercolor effect”, “cute easter bunny” or even “easter bunny sticker collection set”. Apparently the more descriptive you are the more information the program will have to create for you the corresponding image.

Is it free?

For a certain amount of inputs you can use the app free. However after a certain number of requests you will need to subscribe. Each app has its own monthly or yearly based subscriptions and offers.

Does it worth it?

Here comes the 1 million dollar question. Money for value. From this point and on when nothing is free anymore a great discussion opens. What can you create? Where can you sell it? Can you really make an income based on Ai generated images?

There are plenty of sites already like Adobe, Shutterstock and smaller sites that sell stock images that already taking in Ai generated images. Adobe especially, has a special section where if you want to upload images generated by Ai you just have to tag them as Ai generated and that’s the end of story. Plus they have a beta version of their own Ai called Firefly on the way and sounds promising. Now if these images can generate profits that up to the clients and their needs. No one will buy an Ai generated image because it’s an Ai generated image. Apparently you need to be clever about it and make your search on market trends and demands.

On the other hand, here is the debate that this all new industry has created, if you can generate an image, so can any client. So what will be the future of designers in a world where everything is prompted?

That’s why Huge Stock Markets are making their own Ai generators, because this way they can interact with the client, maximizing their profits. They want to go from production straight to consumer.

Ok back to earth because we are not there yet. This new technology is new and still in development. And may I say it, it’s quite raw at this point. It’s far too raw actually for you as designers to start pushing subscriptions, because this is a new technology it learns from you, so in reality you must be paid because you are the teachers and most of the images are with faults. To the next posts following we are going to go over some popular Ai generators and see if their images are capable of covering you as a professional.