How AI Can Help Your Club or Association - AI-Generated Art

Artificial intelligence is a field that is moving almost shockingly fast. Every week, a new incredible program is shaping up to revolutionise how we can use AI to assist us in our daily lives. 

In June of this year, I wrote the article How You Can Use AI To Help Your Club In 2023, where we discussed how AI can be helpful to your club. Still, the field is moving so fast that I am covering the topic again here. 

Today, I will discuss the best ways to generate AI images and how they can help your club. Before we start, I recommend reading the above article if you haven't already, as it is a great jumping-off point for understanding AI.

The Advances in AI Image Generation

To demonstrate just how quickly AI is advancing, I generated two images using the very basic prompt "an Instagram ad, with a slogan for a car club". I generated the one on the left in June and the one on the right in November. Both were done on free AI image generators.

 

 

That's a lot of improvement in just a few months. Please note, as of writing, image generators will not create actual words as copyright protection. However, requesting images without words or simply erasing unwanted words is easy. 

How AI-Generated Art Can Benefit Your Club 

You may wonder why your club needs to consider using AI-generated art. That's a fair question but also an easy one to answer. 

Your club's website is likely full of photos, banner images, thumbnails for upcoming events, tops of pages, in your blog and news sections. Some of these images may be photos from events you've hosted or stock images you found on Google. If you are lucky enough to have very talented photographers in your club or have the money to hire them, then you may not need to worry about AI images. 

However, if you don't have professional photographers, using AI image generators means you can create custom, beautiful images that perfectly match your club's voice and tone. You can fill your event posts, homepage, and almost every corner of your website with free, high-quality images promoting your club. 

Most AI image generators even allow you to upload other images to use as style guides, allowing you to build a cohesive visual brand for your club that would be very hard using stock images or photos members have taken on their phones.  

For example, I created two event thumbnails/advertisements with AI-generated images in about five minutes. 

 

 

Imagine what you could do in a single afternoon. 

Disclaimer 

I would like to take this moment to say that if you can afford to pay a real person to create images for your club, you probably should. Artists have spent countless hours studying and refining their craft to be able to create amazing images, and they deserve our respect and support. I understand that you may not always have the time and money to commission work from artists; I know I sure don't. In that case, using AI to generate images for your club is a fantastic Plan B. 

How To Generate AI Images For Your Club

The first step to creating the perfect image for your club to use is understanding how to write great prompts for the AI. If you don't know, prompt is the term for the instructions or requests you give to the AI to create a specific kind of image. It's like telling the AI what you want it to draw.

As clever as AI is, it can be a little thick sometimes, but it is always worth spelling out what you need from the AI very clearly. Basically, AI generators don't have any cultural context to draw on. 

With that in mind, let's cover how to get the best results from your AI image generator. 

How To Write The Best Prompts For AI Image Generation 

Let's say you run a vintage motorcycle club and want a great image for the banner image at the top of your website. The traditional way to handle this would be to use a stock image or to hire a photographer and have a little photo shoot. For this article, we will create this image with AI. I will be using Adobe Firefly to create the images. 

Describe The Type Of Image You Want

You should start all your image prompts by describing the format you are after. If you want something photo-realistic, ask for "a photograph"; if you want a cartoon, ask for "a cartoon". 

E.g. An illustration of… 

Describe The Subject Of Your Image

Once you have the image format you want, you need to tell the AI what the subject of your image is. In our case, it's going to be a vintage motorbike. 

E.g. An illustration of a motorbike

This is where many people stop the first time they generate an AI image. It's certainly where I stopped the first time, but the key to great AI images is using as many details as possible.  

These are my results from the prompt, "An illustration of a motorbike". 

 

 

As you can see, they're pretty good, but wait, there's more. 

Add More Details To Your Image Prompt Description 

The previous prompt gave us images that, while looking good, aren't the right types of bikes or style of image. So, let's add in more details and see how it goes. 

You can add any relevant details to your image; these can include information on the subject and the style. For example, I will ask for the motorbike to be green and white to fit with Member Jungle's colours. If you do this, you can help ensure that the image you make aligns with your website. 

You should add details relating to any and all of the following:  

• Colour palette 
• Colours
• Styles
• Descriptions of the subject 
• Background 
• Actions you want in the image (driving, racing, etc.) 
• The aspect ratio of the image

 

If the generator you are using gives you the option, also change the image's aspect ratio to suit your needs better. A square image like the above would not make a great banner image. 

Let's try the following prompt with more details. "An illustration of a green and white vintage motorbike, action shot," 

 

 

These options are already a lot better. They are a more vintage style of bike; they tie in with the preferred colour scheme and feel more grown-up than the first lot of photos we generated. However, they are a little cartoony, and I feel we can make them better suit the club's style with some tweaking. 

Add In Negative Prompts

Negative prompts are the exact opposite of the ones we have already discussed. They are attributes that you don't want to show up in your generated images. The vast majority of AI image generators will have a separate field for you to enter in any negative prompts you have. 

Negative prompts often include things such as: 

• Blurry
• Poorly rendered
• Ugly
• Poor lighting 
• Bad composition 
• Pixelated
• Bad anatomy 
• Boring 

 

What you enter as negative prompts is entirely up to you. In this case, I will enter "cartoon" as a negative prompt. I suggest adding more details around the picture style you're after. In this case, I added "in the style of a vintage photograph" to the end of the prompt. 

So, here are the results from the prompt "An illustration of a green and white vintage motorbike, action shot, in the style of a vintage photograph" (with "cartoon" entered as a negative prompt).

 

 

Personally, I love all of these. The third option, in particular, is a real standout for me. If I were doing this for real and not for a demonstration, I would have stopped there and used number three. I mean, just look at it. 

 

 

However, as this is a demonstration, we will keep going. We have a lot of details already in the prompt, and we are starting to turn out some really gorgeous images. The last thing we will do is add a background to the prompt. 

This background could be anything you want. However, my background description was "driving on a desert road in summer with dust". 

Here are the results for the prompt, "An illustration of a green and white vintage motorbike, action shot, driving on a desert road in summer with dust, in the style of a vintage photograph" (with "cartoon" entered as a negative prompt). 

 

 

These are amazing. Any of these could make an awesome banner image for a vintage motorcycle club's website. My personal favourite is number one. 

 

 

I'm genuinely tempted to get this framed for my house; it's that nice. 

The real benefit of using AI to generate images for your club is that they are highly customisable and free. Getting a custom image of this quality, with precisely what you're after in exactly the style and colours you want, made by a human artist, would rightly cost hundreds of dollars and take weeks. Getting it AI-generated will be either free or cost the price of a one-month subscription to an AI generator and take minutes. The AI generator I used for this demonstration, Adobe Firefly, costs $7 a month. I'd be able to cancel my subscription after I got the image I was after, so the total cost would be $7.   

Ethical Issues With AI Images

Artificial intelligence (AI) image generators have raised concerns about copyright infringement and lack of attribution. Often, these generators unintentionally use or replicate copyrighted artwork in their training data. This is because AI image generators are trained using humans' art, which sometimes produces pieces of art that are highly similar to these artists' work. In some cases, AI-generated art even includes muddled versions of the artists' signatures. 

This not only means that the artists are not paid for their work but their art is also used to create AI-generated art that directly competes with their own. 

Below is the list of the best AI image generators to use. I will start this list with what I think is the most ethical AI image generator around today.  

Best AI Image Generators To Use For Your Club 

There is a wide range of free and paid AI image generators available for you to use. I will quickly cover some of the biggest and best ones you should consider using for your club. 

Adobe Firefly

Adobe is a big name in digital editing software; the origin of the phrase photoshop comes from Adobe Photoshop software. You know you're a big deal when your name has become a verb. Think Google. 

In March 2023, Adobe launched Firefly, its AI image generator. Firefly aims to be ethical, commercially safe, and seamlessly integrate with Adobe's creative suite, including Lightroom, Photoshop, and Substance 3D Painter. 

Firefly is considered ethical and commercially safe because it has only been trained on images from Adobe Stock, which is Adobe's stock image library. This means that every photo, painting, and artwork that Firefly uses to teach itself to create art has been appropriately licensed and paid for. 

I use Adobe Firefly as my AI image generator because it's extremely powerful, seamless to use with Adobe's other creative programs, and ethically responsible. As of writing, I believe it's the most ethical choice for an AI image generator.

Firefly has a free and paid version; the Paid version starts at $7 a month.   

Dall-E

Named for the surrealist artist Salvador Dali, Dall-E is an AI image generator from the same company that made ChatGPT. Dalle-E is a powerful and highly adaptive AI image generator that, coupled with ChatGPT, makes a very powerful AI system. Dall-E also integrates with Microsoft Bing. 

Credits can be bought for $15 USD per 115 credits, Dall-E is also available as part of ChatGPT Plus for $20 USD a month (though there may be extra costs). 

Midjourney

Midjourney is an AI Image generator that works through the communication platform Discord. You will have to create both a Midjourney and Discord account before using Midjourney. Still, once you're set up, Midjourney is a straightforward and powerful AI image generator. 

Midjourney's subscription costs $10 at the low end and $120 at the high.  

Getimg.AI 

Getimg.AI is an AI image generator that uses Stable Diffusion's AI engine to create AI-generated images. It is straightforward to use and allows for effortless customisation of the image style you would like to make. 

Getting.AI has a free and paid version that starts at $12 and goes up to $99 per month. 

AI Imagine Generator Pricing

AI Image generators almost universally work on credits. Basically, your free or paid account will give you access to a certain amount of credits per month. It usually costs one credit to create one AI-generated image. However, some settings may cause the number of credits required to generate the image to increase, so pay close attention. Paid accounts may also grant access to more sophisticated AI engines and, therefore, a better-quality final image. 

Where Next In Using AI To Help Your Club?

Hopefully, this article will help you take your first step into creating amazing AI art for your club. Please consider using human artists if you can; not only can this make a big difference to someone's life, but you cannot copyright or own AI-generated images. By using a human artist, you can ensure that you can copyright and control your club’s images.  

If you haven't already read them, I'd suggest reading How You Can Use AI To Help Your Club In 2023 and How Will AI Affect Membership Management?

If you want to learn more about how AI can assist your club, keep an eye on the Member Jungle Learning Centre. In the coming weeks, we will publish an article on how to use AI to enhance your club's videos.