How effective do you think AI-generated images are for digital marketing campaigns?

Any success stories or case studies you’d like to share?

Oak said:
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Same. My first thought is that the person making this had a very low budget and ended up using ChatGPT. Free stock images would have been a better option.

Oak said:
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That’s exactly the problem. You should not see it. If you’re going for simple AI images, just make sure your target audience doesn’t care that much. My mom won’t see the difference, but we obviously do.

It works for me, but I’m in the AI space.

And my images don’t suck (long story, learn styles).

Dustin said:
It works for me, but I’m in the AI space.

And my images don’t suck (long story, learn styles).

That summarizes it perfectly. It doesn’t matter if something was made by AI or humans; what matters is if it’s well made and serving the purpose.

Dustin said:
It works for me, but I’m in the AI space.

And my images don’t suck (long story, learn styles).

Thanks for sharing. To get a good result, how do you build your prompt? Can you share examples?

Dustin said:
It works for me, but I’m in the AI space.

And my images don’t suck (long story, learn styles).

I work in the AI space and I’m determined not to. That said, I am a slow adopter, so maybe I should, haha.

I think AI images have a negative connotation due to how uncanny/inaccurate they look. Most people generally have an internal procedure for determining when an image is AI or not. As a result, it gives off the impression of being low quality. I think AI imagery has a lot to go before it can be properly used outside of internal communication.

Luca said:
No

Ah… can you elaborate?

Caiden said:

Luca said:
No

Ah… can you elaborate?

No

Oak said:

Oak said:
Caiden said:
Luca said:
No

Ah… can you elaborate?

No

Nope

There are a lot of low-quality AI images out there, and as AI is easy to use, I see it more and more from just regular people doing their own marketing for their blog or product they have launched. This stuff is bad.

I’m sure there are professional marketers and graphic designers using it well, so much so, you wouldn’t know.

So as always, it’s about the execution of the campaign and who’s doing it.

I’ve been using a lot of AI tools over time (including images but not limited to images). But I’m not a digital marketer anymore; I use it mostly for my hobbies. For a hobby, an amateur work, or an internal presentation, I think it’s okay. But for something professional with good quality, they would be just a starting point probably. AI is much more impressive in terms of technology than marketing. For marketing, a tool by itself isn’t really very effective.

@Cruz
What tools have you used? I tried ChatGPT and Gemini and both are difficult to create good images with, even with prompts that contain lots of specs or guidelines.

Wolf said:
@Cruz
What tools have you used? I tried ChatGPT and Gemini and both are difficult to create good images with, even with prompts that contain lots of specs or guidelines.

For images, I currently use mostly ChatGPTs that I created for my purposes. I’ve used some general AI image tools like MidJourney and NightCafe, and some tools that are more specific like SkyReels and Crypko. I’ve also used AI tools of things like Canva (that is not so oriented to AI) and things like background removers that are not image generation really, but adjusting the images that I have.

Before AI, the standard to me was a good creative brief and a good professional who can do the work contained in the creative brief. And that’s more than specs and guidelines; it’s also knowing the psychology of consumers in our target audience, knowing the brand positioning intended. I think it’s more about humans (the market) than machines.

That’s hard to expect from AI. Especially if I’m dealing with more specific situations instead of generic images. For example, marketers often use humor in our communication. But getting that right with AI is usually a big challenge, and we can get something cold, weird, bizarre, or even disrespectful instead of the humor that we want.

I’m not a digital marketer anymore; I’ve been more involved with hiring digital marketers than doing digital marketing. So, I do things as a hobby, but I always see that the work I do now wouldn’t be something I accepted from a good experienced professional I hired.

Prompting well helps, but it doesn’t solve the problem. Maybe a great prompt can improve from the quality of a school assignment from an undergraduate student to a graduate student, for example. But the lack of knowledge and experience with the audience can still do a lot of harm.

And AI is essentially a glorified form of regression, keeping many of the core issues. For example, statistics often focus on the average results. Statistics also often exclude the outliers from the sample because of the statistical problems caused in the analyses due to the outliers (outliers like extremely good examples, much better than the average). Dealing with those issues was already a big challenge for statistics before AI. With AI being like a black box, even the companies often can’t deal with those problems anymore and can’t understand what AI is doing wrong (like the many hallucinations that we see if we work with AI constantly).

@Cruz
So, digital marketing, do you need anything in specific to learn it?

Oak said:
@Cruz
So, digital marketing, do you need anything in specific to learn it?

I don’t think there is something you need in general without context. Like other tools, depends on the problem that you want to solve.

For digital marketing in general, not only image, I think we expect digital marketers to know ChatGPT as it’s the big standard. But I use it more for text than images. And then I probably want to see something that matches the problems that you face in your work.

What you need then is probably something logical and natural, like needing a computer and internet connection to use the tool. AI is mostly prompting something and seeing what AI generates. And even prompting depends on things outside digital marketing, like a creative brief.

@Cruz
Thanks for sharing! So you think that if we want a professional result, visual generation AIs are not yet up to the task?

Caiden said:
@Cruz
Thanks for sharing! So you think that if we want a professional result, visual generation AIs are not yet up to the task?

For marketing, I typically think that AI can do the work equivalent to an assignment done by a marketing student. That means people who didn’t even start their careers in marketing, and like a school assignment instead or a job task.

Before AI, I wouldn’t expect a professional result with good quality from a marketing student. With AI, I wouldn’t expect a professional result with good quality from AI. They can be good starting points, but rarely much more than that in my opinion.

AI is cheaper and faster. Those are the key advantages of AI. The advantages are not in terms of quality or reliability, for example. So, as a hobby, for example, it’s okay; that can still impress non-marketers or beginners.

@Cruz
OK, I understand your opinion, thanks!