11 AI image generation examples for the workplace

As fun as it is to generate images of AI puppies playing on the beach (as my daughter keeps demanding), most people haven’t quite figured out how to use AI art generators at work. When Midjourney was first released in 2022, artists did impressive stuff with it and content marketers used it to create featured images for their blog posts. Part of me feels like that’s still more or less the stage we’re in now.

Behind the scenes, though, AI image tools have become a whole lot more effective in the workplace in the past few years.

If you want to use AI imagery at work but haven’t quite figured out how it can actually help your business, I’ve put together a list of examples and starting points that can help you use AI image generators at work.

Can you benefit from using AI image generation?

AI image generation has similar advantages to AI text generation: you can use it as inspiration, have it create a first draft, or even prompt your way to a final result. If you browse stock image libraries frequently, spend a lot of time in Canva, or handle any sort of creative or marketing function at work, AI image generation will save you some serious time.

For example, instead of writing a detailed description of how a new product will look, you can use image generation to anchor the imagination of your audience immediately. This can serve as the starting point for discussion and as a base to start executing.

Here’s a short list of people who stand to benefit the most from AI image generation in their roles at work:

• Content marketers. Content marketing relies a lot on visuals. You can save time in communicating ideas to designers, quickly plug gaps in your content, or generate images with a unique look and feel to grab the attention of your audience.

• eCommerce teams. Whether you’re designing ads or creating product images, AI makes it all easier. Expensive photo shoots to show off your product are quickly becoming a thing of the past.

• Graphic designers. While you’re already a pro in turning concepts into visuals, AI image generation can serve as a first draft, offer inspiration, and open the opportunity for montages or collages, adding new references and aesthetics to your work.

• Product designers. There’s a lot of planning before products actually hit the market. Image generation can help you discuss and explore new possibilities with your team. Having a collection of images may also ensure easier buy-in from other people involved in the decision-making process.

• Architects and decorators. Forget function for a bit, and dive into aesthetics. AI image generation doesn’t care about the laws of physics, room layouts, or project constraints. You can use it to gain inspiration, study implementation options on the site location, and explore moods and atmospheres.

• Writers. Get out of text mode, and engage other parts of your brain. Type a prompt into an AI image generator to flesh out characters, settings, or abstract ideas, and work from that base to create more vivid descriptions, enrich your imagination, and get clear on story elements if you’re writing fiction.

11 ways to use AI image generation for work

1. Generate unique stock photos

When AI image generators were first released, it felt like stock photos still had a decent runway: while AI-generated images were fun to play around with, they didn’t achieve the kind of photorealism necessary for commercial use. But existing apps like Midjourney have improved dramatically over the last couple of years, and highly capable new ones like Google’s ImageFX are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. Meanwhile, Getty and Shutterstock—two big players in the world of stock photos—have seen the writing on the wall and are merging in an effort to survive the AI area.

Instead of filling your website and marketing collateral with generic stock photos—or staging expensive photo shoots—you can use AI image generators to create one-of-a-kind content that actually aligns with your brand. AI also opens the door to possibilities that were once the exclusive domain of big brands: for example, you can quickly adapt marketing photos for different regions and cultural contexts by slightly tweaking your prompt. 

2. Create a team of AI models to rep your brand

For many brands—especially in the eCommerce space—having a consistent set of models is an important part of the brand experience. Midjourney can do a decent job of this with its “consistent character” feature, but most businesses will be better served by a specialized tool. 

Botika, for example (where I got the video above), lets you upload images of your fashion brand’s products and apply them to any one of the app’s 50+ models. Then, you can quickly swap out the background, or create variations of the photo for social media posts or product carousels.

3. Design social media ads

If you’re trying to get your ads to stand out on Instagram or Facebook, you know there’s a lot of experimentation involved. Your ad creative needs to pop in the feed, and you need multiple ad variants for each campaign so you can run A/B tests and boost your results. Plus, you need to customize your ads to the dimensions that each ad format uses (e.g., 1080 x 1092 pixels for Instagram Stories or 1200 x 628 pixels for Facebook ads).

In the past, this added up to a ton of repetitive design grunt work. But now, you can use AI at each stage: to brainstorm initial campaign concepts, design variants for A/B testing, and spin up images in different ad formats. (With Canva’s AI tools, you can do all of this work within one app.)

4. Build instant presentations

Slide decks are great to support a presentation, but putting them together can take a lot of time, especially if you want the visuals to have a unique identity. While you can use AI image generation to tackle each image you’re using for each slide, there are also solutions that include text and image generation to create the whole thing with just a few prompts.

There are a few apps here that can help. Using Gamma, an AI presentation app, I created the above pitch deck in about 30 seconds—including AI-generated images that are relevant to each slide. (My pitch: 3D-printed aquarium products. Investors, feel free to reach out if you want to make this happen.) For more options, take a look at Zapier’s picks for the best AI presentation makers.

5. Brainstorm new products

The product development process has always been bottlenecked by visualization. Without mockups, your team will waste time debating abstract concepts instead of solving real design challenges. Now, AI image generators are changing this dynamic: instead of writing lengthy briefs, you can generate dozens of product concepts in minutes, helping everyone understand the visual direction before getting into the details.

There’s a collection of apps and models that you can work with here. Here’s how my process went: after brainstorming product ideas with ChatGPT, I chose one (the portable smoothie maker), created some initial concepts with DALL·E, and then moved over to Google’s ImageFX to create something a little more marketing-worthy. In addition to all the image generation apps out there, you might also try Vizcom to turn hand-drawn sketches into 3D renderings.

6. Create a mood board or a storyboard

Mood boards are essential to the early stages of many creative projects. But using the traditional copy-and-paste approach to mood boards, your creativity is limited: you’re stuck with whatever reference images you can find. With AI, you can combine reference images with your own AI-generated images to create a potent visual language to define your project.

For filmmakers, this can save even more time—especially when applied to storyboards, which help visualize what takes place in each scene. Instead of taking weeks to turn a script into a storyboard, you can use AI to complete the process in hours (or in minutes, in the case of short-form content like YouTube videos).

7. Brainstorm interior designs and architectural concepts

Need to refresh the layout and decoration of any space? You can do it outside of your mind now, too. Use AI image generation to switch things up, either for rooms in your house, a section of your shop, or scenery for an event.

There are a few apps you can try here: RoomsGPT for starting from a photo or Planner5D to turn 2D floorplans into editable 3D models.

AI images have also become a useful part of the design process for architecture firms, helping architects work through high-level concepts with clients before creating blueprints.

8. Generate visual designs for websites and mobile apps

Need fresh visuals for your website or app but tired of using the same stock icons everyone else has? While there are countless icon libraries out there, they all start to look similar after a while. With AI, instead of hunting through thousands of pre-made designs, you can generate unique visuals that perfectly match your brand’s style.

Take a look at Appicons AI to spice up your icon collection and Illustroke for vector illustrations. And check out Adobe Firefly, which is geared toward designers.

9. Develop your brand identity

Using AI, you can quickly generate and iterate on everything from logos and color schemes to brand illustrations and photography styles. Instead of starting from scratch, you can describe your brand’s personality to AI tools and get dozens of creative directions to explore.

All-in-one AI branding tools, like Looka, are the quickest way to experiment with different logo designs, typography, and color palettes. Then, you can go deeper by using image generators like Midjourney or Google’s ImageFX to create brand standards for everything from product photos to social media visuals. (Tip: If you save the prompts you use, it’ll be even easier to create on-brand visuals in the future.)

10. Create a custom GPT for brand-friendly images

If you’re not familiar with ChatGPT’s custom GPT feature, it’s a way to create your own AI app that’s trained on specific instructions. (Check out Zapier’s article on how to create your own custom GPT for more.) While most people use this for text generation, what’s less well-known is that you can also create a DALL·E-enabled custom GPT specifically for images. 

Here’s how you might use this at work: let’s say you’re in charge of enforcing brand guidelines, but you also want to empower other teams to create visuals on their own. You could create a custom DALL·E GPT with parameters that allow non-designers to easily create brand-friendly visual assets. 

11. Visualize data with charts

Is a chart technically an image? I’m not sure, but that won’t stop me from including this here because you’re definitely going to want to use this at work. AI apps are getting increasingly good at leapfrogging busywork, like gathering data, inputting it into a spreadsheet, and designing a chart. Using ChatGPT, I created the chart above in under a minute—perfect for embedding into your next AI-generated presentation.

Here’s how I did it: ChatGPT’s web search functionality helped me gather data, and ChatGPT’s Canvas feature converted it into an easy-to-read chart, which I then downloaded as a PNG image file. 

Automate AI image generation

Once you find your use case for AI image generation at work, you can automate your AI tools. Build automated systems across your apps, like automatically creating designs based on form submissions or uploading assets based on spreadsheet entries. Learn more about how to automate your AI image workflows, or try one of these pre-made templates to get you started.

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This article was originally published in May 2023 by Miguel Rebelo. The most recent update was in January 2025.