The Substack for DALL-E Prompts has Arrived
Why not sell your DALL-E tested writing prompts? PromptBase only takes 20%
AUGUST 1ST, 2022 1:30 AM MONTREAL, CANADA
I have a pretty awesome Summer Discount going in case you want to support my work here. It’s pretty substantial considering how cheap the monthly cost to begin with is.
Hey Guys,
Question of the Day
I recently have started my Sunday (8:00 AM EST) Discussion thread going on AI Supremacy about if DALL-E 2 will disrupt designers, illustrators, freelance brand experts and artists?
You can participate on the thread here:
https://aisupremacy.substack.com/p/discussion-thread-will-tools-like/comments
But I wanted to cover something pretty amusing about how NLP tools will have dozens of startups around them.
Who needs to write real articles when you can be selling your AI-tested prompts.
Summon your inner writer today that is AI-friendly! Do you like to tinker with NLP tools with your awesome ability to imagine new possibilities?
PromptBase might be right for you. See their website here.
What is PromptBase?
Prompts are becoming a powerful new way of programing AI models like DALL·E & GPT-3.
However, it's hard to find good quality prompts online.
If you're good at prompt engineering, there's also no clear way to make money from your skills.
PromptBase is a marketplace for buying and selling quality prompts that produce the best results, and save you money on API costs. Save credits, crowdsource the PromptBase marketplace.
There are so many juicy ethical implications of this, I cannot even wrap my head around all the legal aspects of this.
So let’s get into it:
An Engineering Degree Not Required!
Now a startup is looking to let “prompt engineers” cash in with an online marketplace that sells these finely tuned phrases.
PromptBase, launched in June, allows users to sell strings of words that net predictable results with particular systems. Priced at $1.99 — PromptBase takes a 20% cut — the content that the prompts generate range from “viral” headlines to pictures of sports team logos, knitted dolls and animals wearing suits.
PromptBase hosts only prompts tested on DALL-E 2 and GPT-3. But according to its founder, Ben Stokes, the plan is to expand the platform to additional systems in the future.
Are you on good terms with NLP based AIs? Do they like you? Are you good at controlling their unlimited power? Directing their machine learning synergies? Join PromptBase as a hybrid wizard.
Maybe it’s your time, to tinker with the future on the Substack for DALL-E 2 Prompts!
Ben Stokes was only to happy to share his vision for the platform with TechCrunch:
“Our ultimate aim is to build tools in order to help support prompt engineers. It’s early days, so we’re currently just trying to spread the word and find prompt engineers to sign up and start listing their prompts for sale on our marketplace.”
“We’re already seeing big tech companies build their own systems similar to GPT-3 and DALL-E, and I predict many more to come. Different systems will likely be utilized like tools in a toolbelt, similar to how different programming languages are used today, and we plan to accommodate all of them as they gain popularity.”
Dozens of startups are quickly positioning themselves around NLP based tools, chatbots and writing and marketing automation related activities.
Who needs to waste DALL-E 2 credits when you can get the best prompt for your desired NLP-command prompt tailored to your specific need?
Sports Team Lobos
1-Bit Pixel Art
Corporate Style Art
Anime/Magma
Custom made Emojis (Clay)
Logos both cute and retro
Video game art
Cyberpunk Misc.
Or that Knitted Doll image you never knew you needed!
Prompt engineering
Since DALL-E 2 is so customizable based on prompts, it’s sometimes easier just to buy a prompt that works the best for what you need: You can buy it before you coulds say:
“Film still of a woman drinking coffee, walking to work, telephoto”
Filtering NLP Creative Generated Images
I think we have to think of prompt engineering in this context like a search and filter. They can also act as “filters” of sorts, creating images with the characteristics of a sketch, painting, texture, animation or even a particular illustrator (e.g., Maurice Sendak). And prompts can portray the same subject in different styles, like “a child’s drawing of a koala riding a bike” versus “an old photograph of a koala riding a bike.”
You will remember how Karen created her Cosmo Magazine cover, apparently it took her thousands of iterations and hours and hours of prompt engineering. (TikTok link)
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Where do we go from here? Freelancers who give us the write phrasing to interact with NLP tools? I didn’t really see that coming.
You might be thinking but wait, I can do that!
The prompt of the words, their order and the nuanced sentence really matters.
There’s a weird wide range of DALL-E 2 that is actually pretty impressive. TechCrunch shares another study that caught my attention.
In a fascinating study out of the University of Texas at Austin, researchers documented an extensive vocabulary of bizarre prompts that can be used to generate images with DALL-E 2. They discovered that the system understands “Apoploe vesrreaitais” — a gibberish phrase — to mean “birds” and “Contarra ccetnxniams luryca tanniounons” to mean “bugs” or “pests” (sometimes). Giving DALL-E 2 the prompt “Apoploe vesrreaitais eating Contarra ccetnxniams luryca tanniounons” yielded pictures of birds eating bugs.
According to its founder, Stokes argues that many of the prompts on PromptBase represent hours of genuine work and insight by engineers. There could be some legal grey area in this guys. Microsoft wants you to waste credits, not buy prompts! OpenAI was once a non-profit, which seems like forever ago.
But it’s Sam Altman we are talking about.
A number of researchers and enthusiasts have released free resources containing prompts for popular AI systems, mostly DALL-E 2. PromptBase is one of the first to monetize the exchange. But DALL-E 2 is not free forever, people will buy credits. They will cut out freelancers. This is the free-market we are talking about.
What happens on Reddit does not always stay on Reddit, especially if it’s the Subreddit DALL-E / https://www.reddit.com/r/dalle2/comments/w94n5w/selling_prompts_an_analysis/
Scandalous, people actually want to make money on the creativity of others! Can you imagine?
There’s a long-running debate within the AI community over which research, if any at all, should or can be commercialized; one Reddit user argues that PromptBase is “starting a trend that threatens the openness and accessibility of AI in general.” I like that talk, but I’m more worried about OpenAI and Microsoft’s behavior around A.I. as a whole. If this is how the AI community feels, they have to urge for corporate accountability. That’s why talent goes to places like HuggingFace.
It’s the future and NLP and chatbots will get smarter, and people will pay for their use (at least until it becomes a ubiquitous utility on the web). If it was a subscription, it would make more sense.
Stokes seems stoked about his marketplace for tiny prompts.
“Today we have prompts to generate basic text and images, but it’s not too hard to extrapolate years into the future where we’ll have prompts for generating videos, and maybe one day even feature-length films complete with orchestral scores,” Stokes added. “Those people who can craft the quality prompts required guide the AI to do these things will be extremely valuable. It’s unknown how big the market will be, but I can see it being a key tech skill, if not the future of programming.”
My Reddit alias is Mediocre_Credit so don’t look at me. For the record, Stokes is on Twitter here and on Reddit here.
I think OpenAI may have opened a can of worms in terms of data privacy. I didn’t know this but apparently studies show that language systems trained on vast swaths of public data, like GPT-3, can “leak” personal information, including names and addresses, when fed certain prompts.
Like trying to answer Questions on Quora for coffee money, I’m the weird sort of person who would enjoy being a Prompt creators.
The most hilarious thing I read about this story is perhaps the following: Stokes said that PromptBase reviews every listing in the marketplace to ensure they don’t violate any “AI generation rules.”
Pray tell overlords of the OpenAI and PromptBase universe, what might those be?
Would like to hear your ideas on this too.
Thanks for reading!