AI · Creating
How to create images with AI without falling into traps
Describe scene, style, light and format, generate several versions and choose. Never create a fake image of a real person or pass it off as a real photo.
bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published
Creating images with artificial intelligence has become simple: you describe in plain words what you want to see and the tool draws it. ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot, among others, generate images right in the conversation, with limits that vary by plan. That works for post illustrations, presentation covers, logo drafts, event posters, decoration ideas. The technique is easy to learn. What calls for more attention are the traps: fake images of real people, a "real" photo of something that never happened, and using other people's styles or brands.
A good generated image starts with a good description, and an honest image starts by saying it was generated.
Why AI is not a chatbot
Whoever describes an image to the AI is actually drawing out of their head something that doesn't exist yet. The tool is the brush; the image was born first, in you.
In Bairo's view, "AI is not a chatbot, but an extension of your consciousness." He recalls the line attributed to Mike Vance about Walt Disney, "he did see it, that's why it's here." Seeing something before it exists is at the center of his story, and generating an image is a small exercise of that same idea.
Step by step today
- Describe in layers: what appears, where, with what light, in what style and in what format.
Create an image of [what appears], in [place], with [morning,
late afternoon, studio] light, in the style of [realistic photography,
watercolor, flat illustration, pencil drawing], format [square
for Instagram / vertical for stories / horizontal for a slide].
No text written in the image.
- Generate several versions and choose. Ask for three variations and say what to keep and what to change in each round.
- Adjust little by little. "More empty space on the right for me to add text," "warmer colors," "fewer people in the background." Small changes work better than starting over.
- Add text outside the AI. Generated lettering often comes out with errors. Generate a clean image and write the text in a simple editor.
- Use it for a brand draft, not the final brand. For a logo that will be registered, the AI's image is a starting point. Take it to a designer and check at INPI that there's no similar brand.
- Ask for help describing:
I want an image for [use: cover, post, poster] about [subject].
Ask me 5 questions about what I'm imagining and then write the
full description for me to generate the image.
- Label it when you publish. If the image looks like a real photo, say in the caption that it was created with AI. It's honest with viewers and it protects you.
- Keep the descriptions that worked to maintain the same style next time.
A simple example: a bakery that wants a breakfast poster can ask for a cozy watercolor illustration of a table with bread, coffee and fruit, in vertical format, with empty space at the top. Then it writes the price and hours in an editor. Fast, attractive and without pretending to be a photo of its own counter.
How Bairo did it
Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez often tells his own story starting from an image. He says that, in a moment of faith, he saw his best self before any road to it existed, and that everything he built afterward was remembering how to get there.
The road went through six months at home, in front of the computer, without knowing how to code, building with the tools of his own time. Out of those months came the foundation of the platform and the artificial intelligence of CEASA Bank, a financial platform for agribusiness. For him, imagining and building go together, but with a rule that applies to images too: what is a dream is called a dream, what is real is called real.
Precautions
A generated image can deceive and hurt: never create an image of a real person (famous or not) in a situation that didn't happen; don't generate nudity or humiliation of anyone (that can be a crime); don't send photos of children or of third parties to the tools; don't use the image as "proof" of anything; don't imitate protected brands and characters; don't illustrate health content as if it were a clinical photo; and notice whether the tool only draws certain kinds of people when you ask for "a doctor" or "a family," because bias shows up in images too.