317 | Stop Creating AI Slop: How to Build High-Converting Visual Content with AI with Aastha Taneja

0:00Isar Meitis:Hello and welcome to Leveraging AI, the podcast that shares practical ethical ways to leverage AI to improve efficiency, grow your business and advance your career. This is Isar Meitis, your host, and I've got a really, really amazing episode for you today. Every business, regardless whether it's large or small, regardless which industry it's in, creates digital marketing assets. These may be videos, these may be images, these may be for social media, for your website, for online sales platforms like Amazon, Shopify, and so on. We create visual assets all the time. The problem is most companies that are using AI to create assets and everybody's using AI to create assets.

0:40Isar Meitis:The problem is that most people are doing it in a very superficial level. And hence, they're getting generic results that look like what everybody else is generating, which means it looks cool, but it drives exactly zero engagement or very low engagement and very low business results. And we're doing all of this to drive business results. So what we're going to do in today's episodes, we're going to learn a step-by-step detailed process on how to create digital assets with AI that actually move the needle. things that when you put them on your website on social on storefronts amazon etc you are going to get engagement and you're going to drive clicks and you're going to drive people to your websites or to wherever is that you're trying to drive them and at the end of the day make business results obvious versus oh i'm just putting content out there because i know i need to do this our guest today astra tanija has been a creative and in the design space for a while she worked before AI building digital assets for brands, as well as doing a lot of freelance work.

1:43Isar Meitis:So she really understands what's required from a good design in order to actually work because she's done this for a living for more than a few years. So she, in the past few years, has taken what she knows as solid, good digital assets, and she taught herself, and as she's teaching others, how to do this effectively with AI. What are the steps? Which tools to use? What are the little tricks that nobody knows, how to create really amazing skills inside, not skills for yourself, AI skills that do what the top creatives in your area does without actually knowing how to do that. All of these little amazing tricks that at the end of the day allows you to use AI to effectively create real digital assets that actually move the needle, which is something that, as I mentioned, every single company and every single organization and individuals, if you're a solopreneur, Everybody needs that because we're all depending on this in order to drive traffic to the different assets of our business.

2:38Isar Meitis:In addition, in our short conversation that we had preparing for this, she gave me a gazillion practical tips, which you're going to get today. Lots of really amazing tricks that you need to know in order to make this better without a lot of effort, which really, really is amazing. So I'm really excited to welcome Asta to the show. Asta, welcome to Leveraging AI.

2:59thank you so much for having me i'm so excited for this conversation i really wanted to keep this very raw i'm not prepared anything so i really want to you know share some practical tips with the audience and i hope uh it helps them practically so for sure but yeah so you know

3:14Isar Meitis:even even in a little conversation that we had uh last week preparing for this i'm like holy crap like there's so many cool little things that people can do and so but let's start really at the high level. And then we're going to dive immediately into the practical stuff. What is the main things that differentiate good visual content from blah, vanilla, generic visual content? Honestly, it depends upon a lot of factors, especially with AI. I feel that majorly people are using ChartGPT. Okay, you can see a design and you can visually tell it that this is being made by ChartGPT. I'm going to show you tricks and trips i use chart gpt almost every single day i use claude every single day but the level of output you can get using chart gpt is very different from what people are generating again not criticizing anybody but you have to be very mindful while using yeah you have to be very smart everybody has access to ai tools every single person out there okay you have to be very mindful you have to be very smart on which model to use for which practical output which you know which conversation what kind of conversation you have to do with chart gpt people are still dependent upon writing big as prompts and you know creating those big paragraphs and okay this is what uh this is how they will get the perfect output and that's what i see usually on screen that people are getting very yeah you must have heard that word ai slop so that ai slop is basically when you are not actually using ai smartly you are not you know using your brain you are just uh typing big prompt and asking chart gpt or any llm to create the best output for you that's what i believe that people have been doing what differentiates from a good content from a blah content is majorly that if you're not you know being creative you are just totally dependent upon ai which i believe should never be happening i know everybody has access to ai and everybody's like okay now we are gonna say bye-bye to our traditional methods and we have to be fully dependent upon ai to generate everything from A to Z.

5:15I because I do a lot of corporate trainings and whatever I see people currently are doing is they're like, okay, we have AI, I have dumped everything to AI. Now AI is not generating the perfect output means this model is wrong, or this like the the way it works is not not right. But the thing is, you have if you want the perfect output, you have to integrate traditional method and AI method, you can't be fully dependent upon AI, at least in this stage of time for sure maybe eventually we will reach a point where we can say okay 90 things are done by ai and just 10 is manual but i believe in today's era we are at least 60 there 60 can be done with ai but 40 with good refinement is very important and ai slop is majorly when you are just dependent upon ai creating the one output and posting it and you know using it for your businesses that is AI slop.

6:06So you have to make sure whatever you are creating with AI, it needs to have certain kind of, you know, aesthetics to it and not just an AI slop. So you have to be mindful for the same. And I'll share that tips and tricks on how to do that. Yeah.

6:18Isar Meitis:So let's really dive in. And I think the first thing that we talked about previously is, what do you do before asking AI to produce the content? Like what are the inputs that make a difference in order to create the output as a better output. And I think that's what a lot of people miss. Like you're saying, a lot of people jump in and they either copied a prompt from somewhere because somebody said, this is an amazing prompt to do something. And then they add their two cents to it. So what are the, if you want like the preparation steps or the things that needs to be as part of the input in the process before you ask for the output?

6:50Okay. So what I usually do is, and most of the big companies that I've worked with, their major step, the starting primary foundation is creating mood boards that's that's what i think is the most important step which people most of the people miss what they do is they just again as i mentioned go to chat gpt just say okay this is the design that i'm looking for and they try to create kind of a prompt or maybe ask chat gpt to write a prompt based on their personal input and then they feel that okay the result is not that good major thing is you are not creating a mood board you are yourself not clear what you want.

7:21So you have to be quite, you know, cautious about what exactly do you have in mind. AI is there to just be your assistant. You cannot be fully dependent upon AI, you have to have a creative mind. That's why I always say that people because most of the people think that AI will replace your job, I believe that if you have a background, if you have a strong foundational background, you can use AI way too effectively, then comparison in comparative to a person who doesn't have that creative background for example if you're talking about design and visual aesthetics a person who have had spent a lot of years in creating those designs themselves using their hands or by by hands i mean using photoshop illustrator and all the traditional platforms out there if you have done that if you have done that hard work the way you will use ai will be very different from the person who is just fully dependent upon ai so i i agree with you 100 i will

8:14Isar Meitis:but I will add something else that we also talked about and I do in many different ways myself and you, I know, do it as well because we talked about this. As much as you don't have knowledge in all the fields, like I've never written code, I'm not a designer and all these things, because AI exists today, you can relatively easy copy the people who are doing this in the best way and how do you know they're doing it in the best way? You don't know how to tell good design from bad design, but you can easily see what people are engaging with. So if a specific brand or a specific person in your field are consistently driving a lot of engagement, it's because they're doing something right.

8:55Isar Meitis:So if I see something in my field that is doing something right, how can I use AI to learn from that to produce similar kind of outputs? And you can totally combine the knowledge, the mood boards into that because I think most people don't even know what mood boards are, definitely not how to produce mood boards. but I think combining these two things together will help a lot. Yeah. So how I usually do is I use Figma for my mood board stuff, Figma and Pinterest. Pinterest is one of the best platforms out there. So for example, if I have to create some visual assets for L 'Oreal, this is one of the famous brands that sell shampoos.

9:29Okay. For example, if I have to create visual assets for them, I usually start by going to Pinterest or any website that you feel that you get most inspired from. I take all the visual aesthetics that I personally really like. okay obviously it doesn't mean that you have to copy and paste each and every design it just means that whatever like what are your brand aesthetics like what do you have in mind before you know even you know asking ai to you know help you with the assets so what i usually do is i download all the best looking assets that i personally like i just drop them to figma i take a screenshot and then i put that to chat gpt but before that i want to really clarify one point people feel that Claude is best for everything, which I completely agree.

10:11But people might disagree with me on this one point, that ChatGPT has its own capabilities and people have not been using ChatGPT effectively. Claude is great for complex tasks, especially when you're trying to build apps. And when I say apps, you don't have to be a coder. You don't have to have a very technical background for that. I don't have any technical background, but I have built apps for different companies, custom solutions for them. So I, for design, for creativity purposes, I especially am dependent upon ChatGPT. It gives perfect output. Trust me on that. So how I usually do is after creating the mood board, I go to ChatGPT, create a project.

10:51Most of the people are not using the project feature. Either it is in Claude or ChatGPT. Create a project. If you want me, I'll just show that to you. Let me just...

11:01Isar Meitis:So two things while you're opening and sharing your screen. One, for those of you who don't know what a mood board is. is a mood board, is a bunch of images that are glued together with a color palette and specific styles. And if it's objects, then specific objects. If it's an atmosphere, then specific images of that atmosphere that really illustrate the kind of style you're looking for. I've done, a few weeks ago, I've done a whole workshop for interior designers and people from that field, so architects and so on, showing them how you can take images of styles that your client likes, drop them into an AI automated process, and it creates the mood board for you.

11:42Isar Meitis:And the mood board knows how to, and the AI, like you said, ChatGPT is really good today, really, really good at combining together multiple standalone images into a mood board. And you can ask for four different versions and find the one you like the most. So this is about the mood board, about projects, which Asta is going to show us in a second. And projects are a feature inside of ChatGPT and inside of Claude that lives on the left side menu and allows you to create a, I like to call them context universes. You can create a little context universe, a little bubble of context that has a lot more information about a specific topic that the rest of Claude or the rest of ChatGPT doesn't.

12:20Isar Meitis:As long as you work within that bubble, then it knows a lot more stuff about that topic. in this particular case, specific design, specific aspects that Astha is going to explain in a second. Yeah. So for example, if I am working with the brand which sells shampoo and I want to create a mood board for that brand, whatever images I like, I'll just copy them, directly open Figma. You don't need a paid version of Figma. If you can work around with the free version, it's best. So I'll just copy all the images that I really like. I'm just randomly copying anything as of now. so like you can basically add tons of images here this is your board once you do that just take a screenshot okay of all the images together yeah all the images together that's all that's what i do it's just easier to even you know paste one copy and paste one one image all you can do is just add all the images and take a screenshot okay but this is the um after step i'll show you how i start so i'll create a project if you see on the left hand side there's a project option right you click on new and just say l 'oreal for example now after creating the project i'll go to my website for example my client's website

13:38i'll basically add the url and just say study that's it just study about this like obviously you can you can enhance it more just for this sake purpose i'm just trying to say that all you need to do is just add your website add whatever information you have for the brand just let llm study about it you can use claude as well for this whatever you like but chargeability works pretty well for me at least for this stage so i won't you know spend more credits by using claude so you have to be mindful on how many credits you are wasting so for easier tasks i I think ChatGPT is perfect. So not only the website, drop all the assets.

14:15For example, you have SOPs for your brand. For example, just drop it to ChatGPT, add whatever information you have. After you are done with this, just take a screenshot and just paste it to ChatGPT in this chat only. Once you create a project, now ChatGPT knows about this brand. It knows everything, like how many categories of product it has, what are the color palettes, each and everything. Just throw in your mood board and ask chat gpt okay i want to create visual assets for this brand i want to create assets for instagram tiktok for different platforms maybe for for different kinds of platform maybe for e-commerce website for amazon listing images main images a plus content like anything just describe what you are trying to make okay once you're done with that chat gpt is gonna analyze each and everything even one more thing uh most of the brands miss that for example i really like how the text is written in this okay i'll take i'll just copy this i'll again paste it to chart gpt i'll ask you to understand the visual aesthetic of how the typography works again the rule or the main conclusion is not to copy and paste but basically training my ai on what kind of aesthetics i am going to you know i i want to generate basically and that is how once you have like put in all your information to chart gpt then ask chart gpt okay i want to create visual assets now tell me what do you think would go viral now chat gpt again will give its own you know versions okay this this this but you again you can't be dependent upon that one thing i really want to share here human psychology because i have worked with many brands that really wants to create their products viral and all of that stuff so we do that on every single day basis so if you really want to create something that has the virality aspect though i believe if you're providing good value to your customers virality is not something you should look forward to but some brands or some clients are very reluctant to that so you should always keep in mind whatever patterns that your human mind is likely to engage to the kind of content they have seen before so this is this is a psychology and this is like there's a big research happened on this like whatever my brain has seen in the past that i have engaged with like the the kind of content that has gone viral if I try to recreate for my brand using that same format it is bound to get viral like the chances of getting viral are much more than creating something for completely scratch now people will disagree and say that okay it means why we have to just copy and paste no it's not about copy and pasting it's about taking the viral format again people you know misunderstand this and say that okay if I'm copying a format it means I have to copy each and everything the way their the visual languages or the way the aesthetics look no the formatting are completely different from the visual aesthetics you have to understand how the hooks are what are the what are the lines that they are saying before starting their content what are the visual aesthetics the kind of elements they are using just try to ask chargpd that this is something that i really really like how can i do this for my brand then the output that chargpd will give you will be far better than just being fully dependent upon it and saying that okay create some like give me prompts to create assets.

17:23That doesn't work beautifully. I love that.

17:27Isar Meitis:I want to summarize a few critical points and add my two cents. So the inputs that you're giving here are not just, oh, I want to create this and that. The inputs included work that you had to do on several different aspects. Aspect number one is understanding the brand, like from their website, from their previous work, from whatever it is that you want. It's like, okay, go and learn this brand. So now it understands the brand. In many cases, you will do the same for the target audience. Who is their target audience? What do we know about them? So that becomes another input to this. The third component is really the visual look and feel.

18:01Isar Meitis:And as you mentioned, just as a summary, there's different aspects to the look and feel. Some of it is the overall aesthetics. Like I just like this kind of style. Some of it could be a font. I really love this font or the way the font is laid out on the page. So show it examples and ask it to learn that and so on. But then there's a little pixie dust, like a little magic that makes things work for others in your industry. So I have built, I call it my content machine. So I have a LinkedIn content machine, a YouTube content machine, and so on. And what these content machines do as the first step in all of them, they go once a week and they go and look for people in my industry.

18:41Isar Meitis:In my case, AI and so on. But you can do this for any industry. and it finds the best performers on those platforms for that week. What post got the same, the most amount of engagement in that week? And then AI picks 20, 30, 50 of those. And it says, okay, what do they have in common? Like, what do they have in common? Are there all videos? Are there all still images? Are there, if it's a video, how long is the video? What's in the video? Is it a person? Is it text? Is it a combination of text? And like, It really tries to analyze every one of these components. How long is the text? What was the hook?

19:18Isar Meitis:What are the gaps between the lines in the text? It tries to analyze all of that. Now, I know it sounds like a lot of work. I do zero of that work. I've got a set of skills that I've built that do this on a regular basis at scale. And then it analyzes and says, okay, what's working right now on LinkedIn is this. And then going back to what Asta said, I'm not copying what they're doing. I'm learning the format, the aesthetics, the delivery method. And then I'm taking my content, the things that I want to say, and it merges the two together. So I'm using a, if you want a successful formula, proven formula together with the things that make me and my content me versus generic slop.

20:01Isar Meitis:And then the both of them together work very well. And you just describe the process on how to do this very easily yeah and one more thing i want to add to this i just want to show the you know difference so this is called an ai slot so if you simply ask chat gpt to create a poster for your brand this is how usually the results are without giving any references like these are your slops when you're like you can see and just tell that okay this is being made by ai but when you give good references when you try to make ai understand what kind of visual language are you trying to create you get these kinds of results most of the luxury brands they go with very minimalistic look they have certain kind of fonts they want to try with now for this cut particular poster i just screenshotted few of the fonts that i really really liked i didn't want to generate anything from scratch so i gave it a few references that this is the kind of vibe i'm looking for some minimalism this is the font that i'm looking for i took screenshots from way two different things created a mood board added to charge gpt and this was the result If you see the kind of fonts it has used, it's very different from usually what ChatGPT generates.

21:09It's very different from that. So that is the power of adding references and adding some mood boards to any LLM that you are using.

21:16Isar Meitis:For those of you who are not watching the screen and just listening to this, I'll try to describe what we're seeing. So it's a bunch of ads that look extremely luxury. That's the feel that I get from these. and they're very minimalistic and they have consistent style. So like the style of them is very much the same and it is very different than again, Asa said that like, okay, this is what Chachupiti or other things are doing. They look extremely professional, very, very clean, but they all look the same. What I mean by the same, they're very different, but they all have the same very clear style, the same kind of font, the same kind of minimalism, the same kind of brownish grayish kind of like background.

21:57Isar Meitis:and they just look fantastic. And they look fantastic and they look consistent because Asta took the time to train AI on how to create this kind of visuals. Now, people think, well, I don't know how to train AI. I don't even know what that means. Well, we just told you. All you need is a ChatGPT project with the right assets, with the right background, with a little bit of instructions and AI can learn the style that you want and then it can reproduce the same outputs or the same style of outputs when you give it new inputs. Yeah, yeah. And one more thing I want to add, for example, some of the products are very complex than others.

22:35ChatGPT is perfect for design. Okay, you can get really good design aesthetics from it. Nano Banana Pro, which people still use a lot, which is great, but it's majorly for consistency. That's what the way I usually do it. I just train ChatGPT around my product, around the visual style that I'm looking for. I asked ChatGPT to create this poster for me okay any poster and then I feel that okay my product is not looking right because when you are posting on social media you have to make sure your product needs to look exactly the same so how do you do that ChatGPT still struggles when it comes to product consistency or you know sometimes it struggles so once you are done generating the visual aesthetic you just upload the same image to Nano Banana Pro you can use any platform either you can use google gemina directly or you can use magnificvv or any other there are a bunch of platforms out there so just ask chat gpt that i want to recreate the same ad but i want to replace the product so give me the prompt for the same again if you if you don't know how to write those sentences just ask chat gpt to do that for you just paste it to nano banana pro and your job will be done but most of the times when you're when nano banana pro also struggles because we have all when you have already generated a visual aesthetic this is one of the most amazing tricks which people still are not using which is very basic to be honest but they are not using it for example you're still your nano banana pro is also not able to generate the exact same product product is way too complex the the text or something is not right maybe the product overall is right but maybe there's a line or there's some kind of element that is missing and you're very particular about it i'll show you one trick so if you use photoshop you can use photoshop or any other um you know online available tool for example this is one chest band product for example my product needs to look exactly like this and in case nano banana pro chat gpt are not able to do it i have created the full design this is just a basic image i'm just showing for the for the tutorial so i'll just click on um erase tool i'll just erase that part okay for example uh it is able to create this full product but this part where the label is it is not able to do that so i'll just erase this full thing okay and now i'll save this image i'll save this full image head over to nano banana pro upload this image upload my product my original product image add that to like add a full prompt you can ask tarjipty again for the prompt and then when you create the image your product will be exactly the same it will be exactly the same like 99.9 percent of the times awesome so i want to

25:11Isar Meitis:because some people are not watching this. I want to explain the process again because this is pure gold and I'll explain afterwards why it works. So let's say you have a product that is complex and it has a lot of things and a lot of components and specific text and so on. And every now and then AI will miss something. It gets everything else right because AI is now good at, like you said, keeping consistency, but it's missing, let's say, in this particular case, the text. You can go to Photoshop or PowerPoint for that matter and delete or Canva and delete the section that is not correct. Then you go back to Gemini and you give it the image with the section that is deleted, so there's a white box where that section is supposed to be, and you give AI potentially two or three images, one of the full product so we know how the whole thing looks, but then a zoomed-in section on the section that was not correct in the original image.

26:04Isar Meitis:And the combination of your image with the missing part together with the full view of the entire product, together with the detailed view of that specific segment, you will get a perfect image, maybe not the first run, then the second run. The trick for that is when AI tries to create 67 different things accurately, it will not. It will create 53 out of them accurately and the rest are not going to be great. So if you can make it focus on the three things you want it to get right, which is exactly what Asta is doing in this process, it will get it right and so you're going from a create this thing that has 67 different really critical things that i want to reproduce to oh this exists just fix these three things it will fix the three things love it love it love it it's a great tip thank you and i also want to show one example that differentiates the results okay so if you see these images I created purely with AI, okay?

27:08I've not used any traditional method with it, not even just, you know, refining it. I have not refined them. If you see these other images, these are all very, very nice Amazon listing images, okay?

27:20Isar Meitis:Again, those who are watching, they're incredible like L 'Oreal shampoo images on like this dark burgundy kind of background. They look freaking awesome. So now we'll continue. Yeah. So if you see these results, again, why I got these results, Again, if I normally use ChatGPT, I would never get these results. I would get genuinely AI slop with so much of text because ChatGPT's biggest limitation is initially in the starting, if you ask it to generate a particular image, it adds so much of text, which looks very sloppy. And most of the brands, they always go with minimalistic, very visually aesthetic, easy to read, and easy for the eyes.

27:59So if you see all these images, why I got this kind of result in just a single click because I used very good references. Most of the people still, they believe that, no, we're not going to use any references because that will be just, again, copying stuff. And, you know, maybe ChatGPT is going to create something that our brand is like, we want to create something from scratch. Very beautiful. Like everything should be, nobody has ever seen that on the internet. You definitely can do that. ChatGPT will not create exact same, you know, visuals that you use as an input, but it will just understand what you have in mind.

28:31So you're very, very, it's very, very important, to you know use visuals as references and for example if you already have good number of assets for your brand for example this is one of a very famous uh you know product very famous brand which sells cookies so i just went to their website i screenshotted like their full website like how their visual aesthetic is for example if this website comes to me for example if you already have a brand if you have already been creating assets for your brand now if you want to try and experiment with different kinds of assets, you can always use them as an input and get completely different, you know, assets.

29:10And you can genuinely, you know, try and test which one works for your brand. So this can be great for especially, you know, Amazon listing images, Amazon product images. Again, these won't be 100 % there, but they are still far, far better than if you try to recreate something from scratch. So always try to, you know, input something that really resonates with what you have in mind. And after that, let me also show you...

29:34Isar Meitis:I want to pause you for just one second for those of you who are watching. So those of you who are not watching, I'll explain. And those of you who are watching, I will give you additional information. What we're seeing on the screen right now is a full design process, kind of like a flow chart on the screen. So think about a canvas with multiple things that are leading from one thing to the other. There are multiple tools like this today. Magnifique is one. Weevy is another. I'm forgetting the third one that a lot of people are using, but they're very common today. And what they enable you to do is they enable you to build a process as a template, if you want.

30:06Isar Meitis:So then you can put in images as references in the beginning, and it will do the rest of the steps on its own. So in this particular case, it creates the ads, but the assets are visual examples of the style. So everything that Asta explained that you can do in ChatGPT becomes automated. You don't have to do the process time and time again. The process is already built. You just have to give it different references in the beginning, and you're going to get completely different outputs at the other side, still following the same process. So this adds focus on this. This adds focus on that. This is the angle on this one.