Unlocking the benefits of Gen AI design prompts for growing businesses

PayPal collaborated content

Create a powerful prompt

A strong AI prompt will produce visuals that are more interesting, more specific, and more likely to match your vision. Here are some suggestions to keep in mind:

• Start with a scene. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but you won’t need that many to create a captivating AI-generated visual. Start by imagining a scene in your head, building it out with a basic noun, verb, and setting or location. Then, refine your image by adding adjectives and more descriptive phrases.
• Be detailed. Each Gen AI platform behaves somewhat differently. But regardless of the tool you choose, it will perform best when fed clearly written, descriptive narratives. Approach prompting like you’re telling a story. Then, add comma-separated keywords after the main prompt to reinforce and further specify that story.
• Experiment with wording. Even if you like the first image your prompt generates, try experimenting with alternatives to yield even more creative results. Get out the thesaurus and swap out various words to see how these subtle changes affect the image. Consider aesthetic-related words and phrases to take it even further, such as “candid,” “retro,” “monochrome,” “sharpened,” “panorama,” and “lens fog.”
• Watch word placement. The placement of a word within your prompt can have a significant impact on the image the AI tool generates. Place the most important words at the front of the prompt — most systems will weigh those as more significant.
• Use longer prompts. Longer, more specific prompts can enhance your outputs. Two- or three-word prompts are usually too vague. Incorporate details about backgrounds, settings, clothing, patterns, and hair color to further refine your prompt. Adding local or regional nuance can also be helpful. After all, a forest in Brazil is hardly the same as one in Washington state.

With the right tools and know-how, you can transform a string of detail-rich sentences into unique images that capture your authentic vision. Some Gen AI tools allow for up to 250 words or more, so you’ll have plenty of room to pile on the details.

And don’t be afraid to sound repetitive — reinforcing key points will help the AI understand the most important aspects of your vision. To help define elements that shouldn’t appear in your outputs, consider features like “negative prompts,” too. For example, you can include “no sports jackets” for a prompt related to “a couple eating dinner at a country club.”

As long as you know what you want and what you don’t want — and how you want your image to make people feel — you’ll be set up for prompting success.

Assess aesthetics and design

Once you’ve got an initial image ready, you can further refine the overall look and feel by adding key descriptors. Consider the following factors.

• Aesthetic inspiration: Terms like “future,” “whimsical,” and “historical” can filter the image through different artistic styles and moods, altering it significantly.
• Sizing, placement, and new additions: Removing, shifting, and adding elements within your image can give it a unique flair. Swap specific details in and out using “refining” features — such as adding a new hairstyle, clothing, or background element — or use “extending” features to make more room for text, expand the backdrop, or experiment with different image sizes for cross-platform posting.
• Camera tools: Some AI platforms, like the updated model of Generative AI by iStock, have features and sliders that allow you to customize even further by distinguishing lens type or depth of field, including wide angle, telephoto, shallow, or deep. To create the look of a professionally captured photograph, try incorporating photography lingo into your prompt, like “horizontal,” “zoom,” “fisheye,” and other common technical terms.
• Variations: Even when you’re fully satisfied with an image, keep the active prompt file in your back pocket in case you want to use, reference, or download it later to experiment with different variations.

Ensure authenticity, originality, and creativity

The best results come when you approach AI image generation with a creative outlook. Gen AI tools exist to enhance and unleash your human creativity, not to replace it. Imagine AI as a paintbrush or camera in your hands that can help bring your creative vision to life.

The more thought and consideration you pour into your design prompts, the more interesting the visuals will be — think about what works well in marketing imagery. Keep a record of your prompts so you can create new variants quickly and experiment with new ideas on the fly.

To mitigate copyright infringement and other potential legal harm, ensure the generative AI tool you’re using is commercially safe. These are tools that are trained on clean datasets — not data scraped from the web — and that do not otherwise violate the rights of IP holders and artists. Also make sure the generative AI service you’re using offers legal protection on your outputs. This decreases the risk of legal liability, allowing you to generate marketing visuals freely and with minimal worry.

When you’re ready to go live with a post or wider campaign, be transparent with customers about your use of AI-generated content. iStock’s VisualGPS report finds that close to 90% of consumers want to know if an image is AI-generated,³ so being upfront about how an image was created is key to maintaining authenticity and trustworthiness with your audience.

As user-friendly generative AI tools become ubiquitous across every industry, growing businesses need to be mindful of various pitfalls. Keep in mind that these tools should not be a replacement for creativity — instead, they can empower it to reach new heights.

Learn more about leveraging AI for growing your business.