Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made a big splash in the graphic design landscape. Designers now have innovative tools to enhance creativity and efficiency. AI is revolutionizing graphic design in ways we never imagined were possible. I suspect it will continue to amaze and surprise us in the coming years.
While I use Adobe products almost exclusively, I have dabbled into Bing’s Copilot, Chat GPT and Google’s Gemini. Some are more helpful than others. It certainly won’t do all of the work for you. A major problem for some is that you need to know how to ask for what you want. Practice helps a lot.
Image Generation
The power of AI can help with generating images, text and patterns. It can create line drawings, realistic images or any style of image you want. In Photoshop you can tell the AI you want something in the style of Picasso and offer an image of a Picasso painting as a reference.
Using Adobe Illustrator, the AI can make vector images, which can be blown up to any size.
Once you have written out what you want the AI to create, you have the opportunity to choose different styles like drawing, graphic, 3D, photo-realistic, etc. And in some cases, you can drill down further to ask for steampunk, layered paper, claymation or other ways an image can be represented. There are so many options. But always with marketing, you want to choose an image that is consistent with your brand.
At this point, everything AI does may have small imperfections (in some cases, large ones). But it has come a long way in the past year or so I’ve been using it. Sometimes humans or animals in images might have an extra finger (or paw), other times their eyes don’t look exactly right. AI is still learning as we learn to harness it for our use.
Examples of Image Generation
Once I asked for an image of a deer walking down a street with a straw hat and purse. The images were adorable. However, in one of them, the purse seemed to be going right through the deer’s body. Also, the deer had a leg that was not attached to its body. As you can see in the first image, it was when Firefly was still in its Beta phase. In the second image, you can see that the deer has all her legs, but the way the purse is attached is still a little off.
And sometimes AI might add something you didn’t ask for in the image. In this example, I wanted an image of a man on a tractor with his dog and a single chicken. The AI went a little overboard with chickens including some in a basket. You can tweak the image until you get what you want. However, with Copilot (Bing’s AI) it only allows for a few alterations and then suggests you start over.
Image Editing
With the latest AI software, you can take an image that already exists, like a photo for example, and add or subtract parts of it. If someone has messy hair, you can click on that and have the hair any way you want it. The person is wearing an ugly plaid suit? Change the pattern or color of the suit.
If you want to add something, you could start with a photo of someone at the beach and add a large wave in the background. You can remove two people you don’t want to see who are in the background. There are so many possibilities. Manipulating photos to look the way you want is easier than ever.
Text Creation
When you create text with AI software, it often has the sound of something that is not personal. If you use AI to create text content, make sure to add your style to it so it sounds like a person wrote it. Add examples. Offer stories that relate to the topic.
Another way you can use the text features is to ask the AI to make your writing more concise or turn a sentence into a social media post. It can do more than just write something for you. AI can take what you write and sometimes make it better. Sometimes you may prefer your original statement better.
AI-generated text content can often sound stiff and robotic because it is! I think the image construction is a lot further along than the text. Chat GPT’s information is at least two years old. Some other AIs have newer information including Copilot and Gemini (Google’s AI), although there is some delay with both of them. Writing evergreen content (something that remains relevant and interesting for a long time) is a lot easier using AI than trying to write about a current event. Copilot will cite via links where it gets the information it is using.
AI Does Have Its Downside
Original images can have a certain look because AI generated them. Once you have seen enough of them, you can start to tell even though they are supposed to look like a photo. Until the software gets a little better, I prefer using images that are drawings or graphic representations so you know they are not supposed to look like a photo.
A teacher told me that while there is excellent software that can detect plagiarism, there is nothing available today that can effectively detect AI-written essays. That is a big problem for teachers these days. But, like all other tech obstacles, I’m sure it will be conquered in the near future.
Real-Time Collaboration
Most AI software allows for collaboration on projects. Google Docs, Microsoft Word and Adobe Creative Cloud are just some of the software packages that allow collaboration. If you combine that with AI software, you can create something amazing.
Summary
Canva and Adobe Express allow for the integration of AI that makes it easy to create designs and share them on social media, use in advertising, on blogs and websites or for use in other places. AI is revolutionizing graphic design as more than a simple tool but has become a creative partner for graphic artists, helping us push the boundaries and achieve new levels of innovation and efficiency.
If you want to keep up with all the latest AI sites and features, check out There’s An AI For That. You can sign up for their daily email or just visit their site to see AI software that writes, creates images and even writes music.
By the way, this blog was not written by AI.
