What are best practices for creating visual aids with AI?

Barbara J. Mayfield, MS, RDN, LD, FAND
2 hours ago
3 min read

Female robot standing by a laptop showing graphs

Creating visual aids with the assistance of AI can save valuable time and result in a professional product if you follow best practices for responsible and ethical use.

In writing last week’s post, I provided ChatGPT with a detailed prompt to create a brief, informative article for SNAP participants about food waste. In preparation for this week’s post, I asked Piktochart to create an infographic for that same purpose. In a few seconds, I had this visual aid:

The resulting output exceeded my expectations. What could AI help you create?

What are best practices for creating visual aids with the assistance of AI?

As with professional writing, use AI as a tool to enhance your creativity, not replace it.

Provide clear, descriptive prompts

AI is only as effective as the directions you provide. Be specific and detailed. Provide context and reference images to guide the AI tool. Describe the desired artistic style, colors to use, etc. Iterate with additional prompts until you get the desired result.

Assess for accuracy and alignment

Review the resulting visuals to check for inaccuracies such as missing limbs or too many fingers. Make sure the resulting visuals align with your purpose, brand, and message. Iterate with additional prompts to fix any errors.

Keep ethics top of mind

Make sure AI-generated content doesn’t mimic copyrighted images or other types of visuals. Be transparent in properly crediting the use of AI, following your organization or publication’s guidelines.

What are examples of responsible use of AI to create visual aids?

Assist with Data Visualization

AI is a practical tool for creating charts, tables, graphs, and other visual aids from your data.

Assist with Enhancing Images

AI is useful for image editing and enhancement. AI can make grainy images clear, enhance lighting and color, resize, crop, remove backgrounds, and more.

Assist with Accessibility

AI can generate alternative text or audio descriptions for images, which is often a requirement for accessibility and a tedious process. Check for accuracy as with all AI-generated work.

Creating Avatars or Illustrations

AI can take a photo and make an avatar or an illustration that appears to be hand-drawn.

The illustrations above were both created by ChatGPT. The first used a photo of me and an image of the book, with directions to have me holding the book and a microphone. The second used a photo of my grandchildren taken on the stage of the opera house.

For anyone who wishes they could draw like this, AI opens the door to expressing our creativity and producing professional-quality work with minimal talent.

In fact, writing this post inspired me to try using AI to help create a visual we were seeking for the updated version of Chapter 22. We were looking for a new example of a meme with a food or nutrition theme.

After spending a couple of hours searching for a meme online that could be used with permission from another source, I thought, "Why not ask AI to assist me in creating an original?"

Using a food riddle for the message and providing a detailed prompt to Adobe Express, I created the following meme with Adobe Express with just a few iterations. How easy is that!?

This series of posts shares content I am working on for the 2^nd edition of Communicating Nutrition: The Authoritative Guide, specifically in the updated versions of Chapter 22, which covers best practices for using AI in professional writing, and Chapter 18, which covers using AI for creating visuals.

Check out these previous posts about using Artificial Intelligence:

“AI is a tool. The choice about how it gets deployed is ours.”

~ Oren Etzioni

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