DALL·E doesn’t just generate photos and images. Hang on – yes, that’s exactly what it does. But wait!
DALL·E’s AI generated photos and images can, in turn depict other creative media, making it a perfect co-creation tool for artists + craftspeople working in anything from textiles and costumery to architecture and interior design.
Before we start – what is DALL·E?
What is DALL·E? It’s a website where you can type in any sentence, and get ten six amazing pictures generated for you in 30 seconds. And that’s it.
Every image you are about to see was generated by AI, using the sentence shown in the caption. None of these are real photos, or real objects.
You’ll notice not every image matches the caption exactly – and many have subtle visual ‘mistakes.’ For this article, we simple chose the ‘best fit’ of the first 10 attempted.
(If you were using it for a real project, though, you would be repeatedly experimenting with rephrasing requests, or generate alternative images based on your favourites, to get closer to your ideal output.)
Want to know more and get access? See more at the end of the article.
As always, we can’t share generations with photo-realistic human faces, so we have obscured them where they appear.
1. Set design, scenic design, and stage design
You can ask DALL-E to create stage sets based on themes, artists, or other adjectives. Try a prompt like: “Award-winning scenic design for “PROMPT! The Musical”, inspired by SOMETHING, high-quality photo from theatrical press release.”
2. Theatrical costume design
Now the set’s sorted, what about the costumes? Ask DALL-E to design costumes. Again, try something like “Award-winning costume design for “PROMPT!”, inspired by SOMETHING, high-quality photo from theatrical press release.”
3. Hairstyles, makeup, cosmetics and nail art
Get in closer, and ask DALL-E for photos of hairstyle designs, make-up designs, tattoos or body art, to bring characters to life. (Remember, images with realistic faces cannot be shared.)
4. Fashion, couture & fashion editorial photography concepts
DALL-E is especially good at generating outfits, figures in a range of settings, making it a great inspiration tool for both fashion designers, and also marketers, photographers and art directors.
5. Inflatable art
DALL-E can breathe new life into inflatable designs! DALL-E can mock up these designs effortlessly. (Except bounce houses / bouncy castles – it doesn’t understand those at all.)
6. Architecture & built environment
Can DALL-E build it? Yes it can! Choose building types, styles and genres, name particular architects, and of course a setting. Then, control the photo itself with lighting and lens prompts.
7. Interior design
Let’s head inside. Give DALL-E interior prompts to manifest the decor scheme of your dreams. Even better, DALL-E is trained on high-quality imagery, so if you suggest ‘blue walls’ and ‘beautiful interiors’ then it will automatically choose furniture that goes with that colour. Lovely.
8. Garden design and landscaping
Fetch the trowel, Quentin! Green-thumbed DALL-E can interpret prompts to reveal mockups of parks, gardens and other landscaped spaces, with the elements you choose. Don’t forget to specify details about the photo itself (lens, camera, time of day, et cetera) to generate the type of image you want.
9. Statues, sculptures and public art
Before you crack out the chisel, ask DALL-E to preview a 3D art piece you’re dreaming up
10. Event and attraction design
From garden weddings to fantastical festivals, use DALL-E to mockup the details before the Big Day. Sometimes it’s hard to whip up interest in a debut event without photography, and you can’t usually get photography when the event hasn’t happened yet! These images might be great for getting permits, winning sponsors, and spicing up a press release.
11. Product design
Generate extraordinary takes on everyday items – just prompt DALL-E! Eventually, these images could be used to brief manufacturers or run Kickstarter campaigns. Again, don’t expect all the details to make perfect sense – but it’s a good starting point!
12. Ceramics, jewellery & craft
Whether you work with metal, glass, paper, ceramics, textiles or another media, DALL-E can help you generate some initial sketches to get a project going. How to achieve it in practice, of course, is up to you!
How to use DALL-E for practical arts
💡 Research & mood boards: Think of DALL-E as Pinterest on steroids, with the added advantage that the images you’re seeing haven’t been invented or copyrighted by anybody else. It’s all new, just for you. You can even use DALL-E with no particular end in mind, just to brainstorm.
💰 Commissioning & briefing: If you’re commissioning a project out to makers, you can use DALL-E images to show the kind of output you’re looking for – really helpful if you’re briefing outside your knowledge zone and lack the requisite vocab, like if you want some staff uniforms designed, but don’t actually know the words for different cuts and fits.
🤞 Pitches & mockups: If you’re a maker, use DALL-E’s mockups to convince leadership, clients, investors, journalists or regulators about your plans. Get everyone aligned and inspired, and persuade stakeholders with evocative imagery.
Important things to bear in mind for arts & crafts users
⏳ DALL-E is currently free – but it’s waitlist only.
2,000 people have access, but there are 98,000 more on the waiting list. Apply below.
🤫 But… there is a separate onboarding track for artists and creatives.
OpenAI are low-key inviting select creators to test out DALL-E. (This doesn’t mean “all artists can join instantly!”, alas.) There is no official application route – you will have to work out how to get OpenAI’s attention yourself.
You might consider proposing a specific, tangible project that combines DALL-E and your passions – something they can easily visualise – and how you might document the results and share it more widely online or with your artistic community. (For instance, “I want to create a website called the Dallery Gallery that documents use cases, styles and prompts!” worked for me! If you’re from the art world writing a grant proposal is probably pretty par for the course, although I get the general sense OA would like practical pitches (’AI-generated tattoos!’) vs. something that ‘seeks to dismantle situated contextualities within the liminal implicitudes of artificial intelligences.’
If the project is the kind of thing that helps positively introduce DALL-E to less tech-y audiences (Film prop departments! Etsy sellers! Jamaican textile artists!) it might find favour. You never know…
😬 OpenAI currently own the copyright to all images generated.
This is set to change, but this blunt set of terms applies during the test phase. Admittedly, the very existence of DALL-E is somewhat unprecedented in legal terms. More importantly…
🚫💰🚫 DALL-E images are not currently licensed ‘for commercial use.’
In practice, this is primarily designed to deter the simple ‘selling of images’ (e.g: charging £5 to run a prompt for someone else, basically monetising your beta-tester access) and NFT minting, but as written*,* and especially as read by lawyers, it could be construed to prohibit a much wider scope of activity.
Informally, however, OpenAI seem to encourage incorporating DALL-E into various creative and professional practices, but might perhaps draw the line at creations that directly feature the DALL-E output. (E.g, using DALL-E to brainstorm music video ideas at work, probably fine; putting a DALL-E image on the cover of your friend’s album, as a favour, questionable; getting paid to design an album cover and just sending them a DALL-E image, definitely not.)
👍 Transformative use is A-OK!
The exciting news for crafters is that OpenAI’s copyright ends at the ‘image itself’, so a painting, sculpture, or other artwork based on a DALL-E image is totally fine. (Crude reproduction, e.g: printing it on a t-shirt, does not qualify.)
And because these transformative works are now beyond OpenAI’s ownership, you should be able to monetise and commercialise these works just fine.
🧒🏻 Content must be family-friendly
Currently, outputs should be rated ‘G’, so prompts for violence, sexual themes and other grown-up stuff are off-the-table, and repeated, intentional attempts to generate content around these topics will result in your account being closed.
In practice, it’s pretty easy to abide by – you can still generate exciting battle scenes, cute paintings of couples canoodling, and so on – but most likely, if you’re designing bongs, dildos, or assault weaponry (or perhaps an unholy hybrid of the three) you’ll probably want to keep DALL-E out of your workflow.
🤦🏼♀️ Photos of faces can’t be shared
OpenAI are pretty concerned about defamatory or fake-news images of people, real or imaginary.
They’ve even gone as far as intentionally stunting DALL-E’s ability to generate lifelike faces.
Nevertheless, under certain conditions, DALL-E can spit out a pretty convincing looking photo of a human face.
You won’t have broken any rules – you can even save these images if it’s just for a personal research project! – but you can’t share them.
