The Prompt Artists

In this paper, we present the results of a study examining the art practices, artwork, and motivations of prolific users of the latest generation of text-to-image models. Through interviews, observations, and a survey, we present a sampling of the artistic styles, and describe the developed community of practice. We find that: 1) the text prompt and resulting image collectively can be considered the art piece (prompts as art), and 2) prompt templates (prompts with “slots” for others to fill in with their own words) are developed to create generative art pieces. We also find that this community’s premium on unique outputs leads to artists seeking specialized vocabulary to produce distinctive art pieces (e.g., by going to architectural blogs), while others look for “glitches” in the model that can turn into artistic styles in their own right. From these findings, we outline specific implications for design.

• Human-Computer Interaction and Visualization