AI Generated Thumbnails
I use AI generated featured images
On my blog posts, I use AI generated images for the thumbnails. The reasons for this are mainly:
- It’s more interesting than repetetive category based featured images.
- It’s a way to help distinguish posts from one-another.
- It’s easy for me to do.
- It’s cool.
Prior to switching to these AI generated images, I simply didn’t have the means to create varied, high-quality featured images for each individual post. As I’m not an artist, the task of creating appropriate images was something that daunted me.
How do I generate these images?
These days, there are many good options for creating images via AI generation. This is great for me, and anyone else with a need for AI image generation, as it affords us the opportunity to try various models and choose the most appropriate AI for our given needs.
My needs were quite simple. In no particular order I wanted:
- Good quality images
- All images to be unique
- The rights to use the generated images on my content
Following some experimentation, I landed on using DALL.E via ChatGPT Premium.
Why use AI generated featured images?
Beyond what I’ve detailed above, the advantages are, in my opinion, somewhat a matter of perspective and expectations.
I am not utilising AI generated images to try improve the reach of my blog posts, or to try improve traffic to my website. There is a small chance that these images could have an effect in this regard, however small, but that isn’t a goal of mine. My only desire with regards to the generated featured images is to help allow each individual post within the website to stand out.
I find that it’s more engaging when there’s a fun, unique, and hopefully weird image next to each post. I try to tailor my prompts which generate the images so that the images are relevent to the content it’s matched with where possible. I also enjoy some of the more abstract and odd images which look and feel AI generated without being too distracting from the post content itself.