AI image generation has crossed a line in the last 18 months. Not a "this is the future" line — a "this is practically useful right now" line.
I remember the first time we tried using Midjourney for client moodboarding in 2023. The results were impressive enough to screenshot and weird enough to never actually send. Fingers wrong. Text garbled. Everything slightly off in a way you couldn't quite name. Interesting experiment. Back to stock photos.
That experiment has a completely different outcome today.
AI image generation crossing from "interesting experiment" to "actually part of the brief."
What AI image tools are legitimately good for
Moodboarding and concept exploration. This is the killer use case, imo. Before a campaign shoot or a design sprint, generate 20–30 visual directions in 30 minutes. Test whether a gritty industrial aesthetic actually fits your brand before you book a studio. Test whether a warm natural-light direction works before anyone spends a rupee on production. AI gives you a rough preview of a direction at near-zero cost.
Background and environment generation. Your product photography is excellent but the background is a plain white sweep. AI can place that product in a coffee shop, a minimalist home, a dramatic outdoor setting. Used well with good compositing, the result is indistinguishable from a location shoot. Used badly, it looks exactly like what it is.
Texture and pattern creation. Abstract backgrounds, brand-coloured organic textures, geometric patterns. Seconds to generate, styled precisely to your palette. Replaces expensive custom pattern design for supporting brand assets.
High-volume social content fillers. Not every piece of content needs original photography. Illustrative headers, thematic background images, abstract concept visuals — AI handles these efficiently and at scale.
What AI image tools are still genuinely bad at
Be honest with yourself here:
Accurate representation of real products. Prompt AI for an image of your specific product and it will generate something that looks like your product category. Not your product. The details will be hallucinated. Don't use AI-generated product images as product images.
Consistent faces and characters across a campaign. Getting the same character to look the same across 10 images is genuinely hard. The technology is improving but it's not reliable for campaign-level consistency yet.
Text within images. AI-generated text is almost always garbled. If you need readable text in an image, add it in post. Every time, without exception.
Nuanced human representation. AI systems still carry biases in how they represent people across ethnicities, ages, and body types. Every generated human image needs careful review — not just aesthetically, but for what it's communicating. Especially relevant if you're creating content for regional Indian audiences.
The AI-generated product shot with hallucinated details and garbled background text. The client will spot it. The audience will spot it.
Choosing the right tool
Midjourney produces aesthetically sophisticated, visually distinctive outputs — particularly for editorial, fashion, luxury, and conceptual brand aesthetics. The prompt learning curve is real but rewards the investment. Best choice for brands where visual distinctiveness is the priority.
Adobe Firefly is trained entirely on licensed content, making it the safest commercial option. For brands worried about IP exposure — which in India's increasingly active IP environment should be most serious brands — Firefly is the professional default.
DALL-E (via ChatGPT) is the most accessible and most literal. Better at following specific, detailed prompts than Midjourney. Less stylistically interesting but more controllable. Good for quick ideation and concept testing.
Google’s Nano Banana tho is hands down the GOAT of image generation today, imo.
Prompting for brand alignment
The output quality is entirely dependent on input quality. A vague prompt gets a generic result. A precise prompt gets a usable result.
Key prompt elements for brand-aligned outputs:
- Subject: What's in the image, described specifically
- Style: Photography? Illustration? 3D render?
- Mood and lighting: Golden hour? Studio flat? Dramatic?
- Colour palette: Name your brand colours explicitly
- Reference aesthetic: "editorial Indian fashion photography" or "minimalist Scandinavian product photography"
Example: "Minimalist product photography of a dark glass bottle on raw concrete, soft diffused side lighting, deep shadows, warm charcoal and gold colour palette, editorial fashion magazine aesthetic, no text"
That level of specificity is the difference between summat usable and another prompt to the trash.
The authenticity line
Use AI for environments, textures, and conceptual imagery. Use real photography for people, real products, and authentic brand moments.
The audience's ability to detect AI in human images is improving fast. Their tolerance for it in brand contexts is decreasing. Stay on the right side of that line — not because the rules say so, but because the work is genuinely better when you do.
The creative team using AI for moodboarding and background generation while saving human effort for what actually requires a human.
AI doesn't replace the designer's eye. It accelerates the path to having something worth refining. That's valuable. Use it for what it's actually good at.
-Jay