People Have Begun to Sell Their Prompts for AI-Generated Artwork

As AI art has caught the eye and interest of more unsuspecting viewers, opportunistic entrepreneurs have turned their text prompts—which are said to be more impactful than those written by less experienced users—into a product. For just $2 to $5, someone looking for a specific AI-generated image can buy a prompt that promises to deliver on what they’ve conjured in their imagination, no re-running required.

AI-generated art is certainly having its moment. DALL-E 2, a free-to-use AI algorithm that produces impressive (albeit sometimes unsettling) images based on the user’s text prompt, became so popular this summer that it made meme history. Also, last week an AI-generated “painting” generated controversy by winning the Colorado State Fair’s digital art contest—despite the fact that all of the other entries had been made by humans. This very likely made AI art more appealing. With the right text prompts, anyone can be considered an “artist,” with no real artistic skills required.

There are already entire online platforms dedicated to these prompts. The Verge’s Adi Robertson recently interviewed Justin Reckling about his experience making prompts for PromptBase, an AI prompt marketplace. Reckling mentioned that there are style keywords, like “long shot,” “hyper-detailed,” or “cinematic lighting,” that can be added to prompts to add depth to AI-generated artwork. Some systems, like Midjourney, allow for more customized prompts in which certain keywords can be weighted more than others. Others, like DALL-E 2, run on simpler prompts.

The prompts available on PromptBase generate a range of images, from ape avatars (an obvious nod to Bored Ape NFTs) and 3D wallpapers to food clip art and futuristic building renderings. Reckling’s most popular prompts are those that generate 3D “block buildings” and T-shirt product shots, onto which shirt designers can add their own images. To someone out of the loop, the results from these prompts are so well put together that they could easily be attributed to a human artist, not an AI algorithm—which some view as cause for concern.

As we touched on in our story about the art competition ordeal, the rise of AI-generated art (and the commercialization thereof) has some artists worried that their labor will eventually lose relevance. I can’t really blame them. As a writer, I can’t help but worry there will someday be a market for prompts that feed copywriting AIs like Jasper and HyperWrite, which claim to generate entire paragraphs of clear copy in seconds. (There might already be one, but if so, I’m choosing to live in ignorant bliss.) Some even worry these artsy AI algorithms might be guilty of plagiarism, since their results are based on existent works that were painstakingly created by humans. But by now, it’s too late: AI-generated art has wriggled its way into the mainstream, and it only makes sense that various ways to profit off this new commodity would follow.

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