Creating visual assets for your community is really hard work.
You may search around for stock image libraries, but let’s be real, they’re not great. Or you may end up using assets from Canva. And just look like everybody else.
Maybe you’re lucky enough to have a budget and can actually employ an artist who can help you create the images and templates that you need.
But this can be really expensive…
And you may find that you’re just using the same assets over and over again, or it’s a real struggle to push that creativity element.
Well, what if I were to tell you that artificial intelligence could actually help you out?
You could source better images to use as your community assets, or at least provide inspiration beyond what you could even imagine?
I’ve been trying out the free AI tool called Midjourney to create visual assets for helping to build and engage community – the best news is it’s really easy to get started and it’s a lot of fun to play around!
I also see AI tools like Midjourney can be used to actively engage your community members and encourage them to be more creative (without requiring artistic skills themselves!).
Getting started with Midjourney
There are currently additional AI programs that produce art. DALL E, one of the additional tools, is maybe a little more well-known.
But I have to confess that Midjourney is really simple and easy to use. Additionally, you may create 25 free photos using this tool.
The AI tool is currently hosted in the middle of the Discord server.
You will thus be utilizing Discord the entire time to create your own graphics.
I recommend visiting the Getting Started channel in their Discord channel first. There are instructions for using the tool and making your own photographs, but in order to do so, you must go to one of the beginner channels to use the AI tool and get your images. The getting started channel explains everything, and it’s really not that hard to start.
After entering one of the beginner channels, you type “/imagine,” and then after that you can type whatever you would like to be in your image!
Midjourney sends back four image variations in a minute after you submit your prompt.
From these four images you can select either one of these to then create the “highest quality” version of that image, or you can request a “variation” of that image so the AI knows it was “close” but you want to see some other options.
Midjourney provides you with tons of documentation to make sure you understand how to give the right prompts to the AI to get the images you want.
It does take a while to get used to the prompts to generate the images that you’re looking for, but that’s all part of the fun!
Just think, you’re now using AI to generate images!!!
A Fun Concept of Community
You can see why I’m so enthusiastic about this AI tool… if you’ve ever been trapped having to use commercial photos or describe your ideas to an artist (which can be really hard!) now you can just type what you want and the AI tool will do the rest.
Even if you still want to work with artists (which is understandable as the AI tool is not exactly guaranteed to give you “perfect” results) – you can use the AI tool to at least create a “starting point” image for you to then discuss with your artist and further refine what you’re actually looking for.
Here’s some of my FIRST attempts at using the tool…
BONUS COMMUNITY MGR HACK: How You Can Use Midjourney To Engage Your Community!
Here’s an idea: why not use Midjourney to encourage your community members to come up with their own images?!
You could encourage your community members to sign up for Midjourney, show them how to use a tool (as you can see from my above instructions, it’s not that difficult to get started).
Then ask your community members to go and create their own images. This would work really well in a community if you’re encouraging your members to try new technology and learn new things.
Once the community members have come up with their own images, you should encourage them to share it with their own community.
I would encourage you to set some parameters (unless you’re really open to having crazy suggestions come through). Having some sort of strategy around how the competition is super relevant to your community and their goals, the better your engagement should be.
You could create competitions around this and have your community members vote on the best submission – it’s fun because it’s so visual.
I can really see community members getting into this and all it takes is just a little bit of education upfront to get them started.
Quick run down:
- Have members sign up for Midjourney
- Educate them on how to use the tool (prompt “imagine”)
- Ask them to play around then submit their best images
As a side note, I even think web3 communities that are big on “art” can also use tools like Midjourney to engage their members. There’s nothing to stop artists from “building on top” of the images that AI creates, or even deriving inspiration from it whilst creating their own art.
I don’t see AI art as a competitor to artists, but rather a way of empowering more people to be creative.
What do you think?