GPT-4 Image Generation for Business: Create Stunning AI Visuals That Actually Work

Locals, good morning. Happy Friday, HubSpot Nation, LinkedIn friends. It is March 28th, 2025. We are almost to April. It is time for another episode of Let's Build AI Skills with Nico, George, and Chris. How you fellas doing today?

Well, I was doing good till you said almost April. I was super happy was Friday. I was like, it's like I'm on a high, and then Chris crashed.

I'm doing good, I'm doing good, I'm doing, uh, amazing. Uh, a lot of, a lot of great news this week, and things are moving in exactly the direction that we have been talking about. So, uh, super excited, super excited.

Yep. Uh, we got a UI refresh in Claude, we got some ridiculous image generation in GPT. Uh, we got a Replit update, we got, we got robots dancing. Uh, man, we got it all. But, uh, I was really excited, and I know obviously George dove in right away like he does, uh, to the image generation. Um, so we're gonna, we're gonna show that off, but I do want to talk about the conversation that's starting to happen on LinkedIn like related to that. And that is, you know, it's so good. And people like, you know, Jonas DeMets like shared a bit, shared an image as if he were speaking at Inbound. And it was so freaking good. Yeah, that there were some comments about how unsettlingly good it was. And I was just like, why? Why is this unsettling? And how many will you have to see before it's no longer unsettling? Um, and I, uh, they said openly they could not answer that question. Uh, but that's kind of the world we're in. So I'm just curious, um, what you guys are seeing out there, and maybe like showing a little bit of behind the scenes, George. Yeah, will, will help. Um, one, like, why It makes so much damn sense to start doing this. Oh yeah. And to kind of like how you can get comfortable.

Yeah. So, so I mean, here's, here's the thing. Let me address the first conversation that you started to have. Like, people are doing the things that they're doing right now because it's novelty. I can put myself on stage at Inbound because maybe I've never been there and it would be kind of cool and I'm testing and I'm playing. But with great power comes great responsibility. And I believe in my heart that of course there are bad actors, but good humans will be good humans. And once they get past the novelty and once they get past the testing phase, they're gonna be like, oh, that's cool, but let me just— let me do something else with this power that I have that makes more sense for me and for my business. Like, I don't think that, um, automagically that we're gonna just Uh, the increase in bad actors is up 56.2% because ChatGPT now lets you put yourself on state. Like, everybody just take a beat, relax a little bit. Like, we're having fun right now, but we'll get back to work in a minute. Like, that's, that's how I feel is happening. And of course, like, everybody's gonna jump on the bandwagon. But, but let me do this. Let me, let me share my screen because Like, I think there are some very interesting things that we can start to think about and we can start to do. So when I, when I went into this, I wanted to kind of see what I could do. And so right now you should be seeing like a Facebook post and I created this guy. Uh, I don't know who he is. He, he looks rugged. He looks human. He looks like he's climbing a mountain. And this is what I asked. I said, I literally said, can you create a highly detailed image prompt for a wide image that is a guy climbing a mountain wearing a blue parka? Like, this is, this is the creative direction that I get. I didn't say anything about goggles. I didn't say anything about snow on the beard. Um, me personally, the first thing I did, it was super simple. Now what I want to show is kind of a little bit behind the scenes of like super simple to get complex. And so this was another one. Now interestingly enough, like this is some sort of video game. His steering wheel isn't attached. That's probably why he's on fire because dude is wrecking. Like, I'm just gonna like— so there's some things that you could tweak. Like this, he's intense. My man is trying to win the race. But like, you can see the facial expression and he's got the right amount of fingers. I'm just gonna throw that, and his steering wheel's attached. So like, I'm sitting here playing with this stuff and I'm trying to see like how good I can get it. And for my use case, I'm thinking like featured images for blog articles and things like that. I'm not necessarily trying to make this George in a blue parka climbing a mountain so I can go on social and be like, Yesterday I climbed Mount Everest. Like, I'm not, I'm not trying to do that, right? And so I want to show like how simple of what I do is so I can get to where I can get to something like this. Because here's the thing, I put this out there and if you go to the Facebook post, somebody, my friend Bella Vesta, she said, yeah, I tried it, didn't work for me. And she posted her image and it wasn't, it wasn't the greatest of images. So I was like, oh, Maybe the magic isn't just the fact that you can generate these images. Maybe the magic is in how you could get to the point where you could generate these images like this. And so I'm just, I'm randomly going to ask you guys, pick a topic. Just give me a topic.

See, that's strawberries in summertime.

That's why I did that. That's the hardest part.

Like, no, I had, I was waiting for the human.

Has to come up with the, the idea, right? So here's the thing, you said, um, okay, so what I'm gonna do, I want you to create a photorealistic— and I know I'm fat fingering this, so everybody who's judging me for typing— no, we'll get there, we'll get there. So I want to create a photorealistic, uh, image prompt. Okay, now here's what I'm going to do, here's what I'm going to do, uh, I want I want it to be highly detailed. I want it to be a close-up of a basket of strawberries, right? I want the background to be the rest of the field field, and let's say a tractor. Okay, so I'm giving it some elements, and then I'll be like, uh, do your best, use pro camera lens and lighting details. Give me the prompt, please, because I'm always kind. Now I'll come back in here and I'll just do my little like, thanks Grammarly for being the best prompt engineer helper. Boom. And so then this is what I do. Now I'm going to get a prompt, right? A close-up shot of a— this is because I'm lazy. I don't want to type all this. I might not even know all of this. I knew all of the things that I said, but this gets ninja. Canon EOS R5 or Nikon Z9 lens 85mm f/1.4. That's the blurriness, by the way. I do know that much because I do do some video stuff. Natural golden hour. This is a design term. This is like a photography term. Okay, so now what I'm just gonna do is I'm gonna grab this and I'm gonna be like, uh, please create this image. Now we're gonna be sitting here for a hot minute, but I will be the, the guy— I will, I will, I will die on this hill that I'm about to say. I would much rather wait a few extra seconds, if not minutes, for something that comes out being amazing than get mad that it's going to take a little bit for this image to generate. So we'll let this image generate because it's, it's doing its thing and we gave it a hefty prompt. Okay, we're going to be looking for the tractor, we're going to be looking for the close-up of the, the basket of strawberries. And then the crazy thing is what I want to do next is I want to talk about what really makes this magical is once we get the image, we're going to ask it to make it into a meme. And I'm not going to give it any direction. I'm just going to be like, hey, be creative and turn this into a meme that I can share on social. That's the only line that I'm going to put after this. And then, and then I'm going to let it regenerate. But first, we're going to let this generate. I'm going to pop it up full width. I'm already hungry for some strawberries in my dang cereal. I haven't eaten breakfast yet. I'm like, those look tasty. That tractor is dope as hell. It has all the wheels and the windows that it needs. It's got the blurry background. Like, I'm ready to use this right now on something, right? Hey Sam, come use this for a next release of something that has to deal with strawberries. Maybe, I don't know, because this would be a great— okay, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna pop this open. Do you see the detail in the seeds and the glistening of the, the water or dew and the lines of the actual strawberry? Anyway, so, so this is This is dope. Now I'm just going to be like, please make this a creative meme for the internet. Uh, do your best and be funny. I'm just going to say that. I want it to be funny. Okay, that's not how you spell funny. I don't care. Grammarly is the best prompt engineer fixer ever. Boom. Now we're just going to let it go. Okay, I'm going to be quiet. You guys can talk about A, the, the, your thoughts on the process, the prompt, and the outcome. What, what say you?

I mean, I think it's honestly like that's the same way that, that I usually tell people to, to go about it, right, when it comes to prompting, is that like the model, the model knows what it prefers, just like a person knows what they prefer in terms of how they prefer to get direction. So it just makes perfect sense to start there and then start going outward, because especially like, like George was saying, he puts a, he puts a little bit in, gets a lot out, and then from the amount that he's getting out, now all of a sudden you get these like key terms that you didn't even think of before. So now you have these things that you're going to go explore, right? Like, I haven't even told George what knolling is yet, but as soon as he does something like, I don't know, CRM from a gnolling photographic view, he's gonna go nuts and he's gonna be doing that for like 3 weeks.

I can't, I can't wait to hear this. I can't wait. Right.

Um, so you're going to—

images talking about me, strong, juicy, and undeniably attractive. Maybe, maybe it's a strawberry. We'll see.

I really, I want to see what the bottom part's gonna be.

I know, right? I'm like, I hope this is— I hope this kid-friendly. Well, we'll see. I'm getting nervous.

Um, yeah, I don't, I don't know. That, that hasn't happened yet. He hasn't, uh, opened the barriers up on that end yet, so it should be, uh, should be safe for work. But, um, that is one of the things when you said that the images take a minute, they do, but they, they've already started asking people and polling people. Now, this is a feature that's only available for paid right now because it is one of the reasons it takes so long is it is really burning up the, the bandwidth.

Um, basically, oh my God, I love it. Here, Nico, I want you to keep going, but I also want to show like a real, uh, world, like, use case. So one of the things that I do in the morning, uh, and this is— I'm not saying anybody needs to do this, but one of the things I do in the morning is I actually do morning devotions. So I put in like my morning devotion from my Bible app, and then I ask it to teach me in a simple way. I teach it to ask me in a complex way, and then I get it to write a blog article that I can then tweak and share, like, on this special place that I have on the George B. Thomas website. But look at this, like, I asked it to create a featured image based off of the topic of my devotion. Do you see the glistening of the water? Do you see the rocks? Do you see the, like, dry ground and, like, But, but because the tree is rooted anyway, I'm not going to start preaching. I'm just saying, like, there are real-world use cases that this creativity can, like, unlock something that you— that you're either doing and it could be better, or that you never thought you could do and now can. Okay, I'll shut up. Nico, go ahead.

No, it is right. Like, we've been talking about this, you know, the three of us have been talking about this for months, that Um, it is, it really is the case that, um, you know, now you have this capability of unleashing that creativity in your head out into the real world, you know, bringing all those thoughts and ideas out into the real world. So where, where you, where you all might be met with this idea of like, oh, things are taking over, taking over, taking over, it's not because we derive everything that we do Action breeds reaction. Light breeds, you know, from dark breeds light. You know, from stop you go. There is this balance that exists, and now we have this, this flurry. I mean, like, it's, it's, it's, it's really, it's going to be an explosion over the next 3 to 6 months of artists, programmers, musicians, like practically every area that you can think of.

Why?

Because now we have that knowledge and now we have that capability. Now we have these tools, right? And I think it's amazing, you know, you were saying that, that it does take a while and they, they ask— people don't care.

No, I don't care.

So you— I mean, it's exactly to your point because it's like the, the quality is so good and the, the output is so close to what, what it is that you're after. And like you said, when it comes to making the multiple images you're, you're just telling a story and you're just talking through it. You know, I was doing this playful thing for, uh, for HubSpot, uh, and came up with a little, uh, character because I was trying to do— I was just trying, you know, like yourself, just messing around with it, um, and, uh, and playing around to see like, okay, what, what could I do? And I wanted to not, you know, come start doing like something like CRM image related. Um, and so if, you know, here's another one that you can mess around with, George's exploded view. Um, it didn't get it quite right. Um, I wanted to try to do an exploded view of the actual, uh, application, but, you know, um, as soon as it did that, I was like, oh, you know what, Sprocket, like, ah, we should, you know, I love like the style, I love in particular, but I was like 'Yeah, I should do that and come up with, you know, something like Fallout-ish but featuring HubSpot.' Yeah, so now we have Captain Sprocket.

Oh, that's badass right there, dude.

Like, so, like, the— like, oh, I just gotta mention, uh, Michelle's comment here. Please tell me the three of you are opting to do a talk at Inbound. AI, uh, or available. I'll say that, uh, if anybody wants to, uh, get that petition together to, to see us talk.

Hey Courtney, hey Adrian, I'll send you this video, uh, if you want to come up with a special event where the three of us are on stage in the main area and we talk about AI, just let me know. We're, we're down for it.

Yeah, thank you, Michelle.

Oh dude, this— oh, only you can help to prevent CRM fires. Oh, this is dope. Okay, my week.

So that's the thing, right? It's like, as I'm doing it, it's like, okay, can you have Captain Sprocket looking as though he's flying over buildings that look like a bar chart and with a smile on his face? Because like previously he had this, like, I, I told it to like give him a look of determination. Um, see, and then it's like, okay, add some people that are saying like, look, Captain Sprocket, right? And it's like, it's again, it's effortless. Like, here's the image and then do this, right?

I hope people understand because if you haven't tried to do consistent characters before and the way that this is staying like so consistent Like, bro, that was the part—

that was like the part we were all kind of waiting for, right? Is this consistency. Like, that's crazy. Like, that's such a leap forward from where it was, because that was the most frustrating part. It's like, oh, that was so good, but this is a small part. Well, small part is wrong, like the extra finger or whatever.

So that's the thing, it's like where Nico says, I did something special to make it happen. No, no, no.

Like I'm watching this thing happen real time, and it's, it's happening so very quickly. And it sucks because I told my wife, like, a couple years ago, I was like, man, you know, everybody's about to get nerfed real hard, and they, they don't even see it coming. And she was like, what are you talking about? And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm like, you don't, you don't know what that term means, but in the world of video games, when you get nerfed, it's a term that's used to mean that you get hit with a Nerf bat. Right, which basically it's like saying that you were doing something, but then a little bit got taken off the top, right? So, uh, how that works is that, you know, maybe you're playing a certain character, a patch comes out, all of a sudden that character is now weaker than it was before, but you've invested, you know, whatever, 20, 30 hours into that character. So now you were inadvertently pulled back even though you didn't want to be, but you were forced to move back, right? Meanwhile, other people, or could be that, you know, things, something that took you a long time to do before, usually this is the case, something that took forever to do before, now you go talk to a character and they just give it to you. So, you know, players get obscenely upset because of the fact that, you know, oh, we've invested so much time to learn how to do this thing and now someone just walks in and does it or pays a little bit of money and they do it. And so that's the evolution. That's what evolution looks like.

Yeah, here's what's—

that's not really nerfing, right? So like a couple months ago, or like 6 months ago, you could do what you guys are talking about. Well, I should say like 3 months ago, you could do what you guys were talking about, but you could do it with Midjourney, which was a much more complicated image program where you would have to understand how seeding works, you'd have to set up your own styles, that kind of stuff. But with a little bit of time, actually, you could do it months ago with Leonardo. It was one of the first, uh, image apps where you could create your own style and apply it to images. Um, but again, took a lot of knowledge from an image standpoint, from a generative standpoint. It's not like what we're doing now. So here we are months later, all those people that spent all that time building out that app to do that super specific thing—

gone.

It's gone. Nerfed. Bye. See ya. Hey, by the way, you created the dopest, uh, YouTube thumbnail without even knowing you were creating the dopest YouTube thumbnail.

Yeah, right.

Because I got an email while we're on here and check out what actually came into my inbox of like being alive. And then it's HubSpot CRM Captain's Sprocket is actually the— what got presented to everybody.

So nice.

That's like I want that. By the way, I challenge you. I challenge you to train GPT on what a dope YouTube thumbnail is. And then ask it to generate 2 highly clickable versions of a YouTube thumbnail for XYZ topic, and then layer your little PNG photo of yourself on top of it and see what happens to your creative process.

Anyway, all right, all right, my turn to have some fun. Uh, are you ready for the realest of real use cases that should— everybody should just stop doing what they've been doing before and switch, like, just wholesale.

Is this like Christmas? What's happening? What's gonna happen?

Uh, oh, this is just repurposing on repurposing on repurposing, right? And like building the foundation. If you're doing all this one-off stuff, like, just stop first of all and just imagine, like, we're doing website redesigns or website updates and like, oh, we need some stock images.

Yep.

Uh, and we're gonna— we go and we find one, we're like, it would be cool if it was doing this though, and we look through like 1,000 more to try and find that other, other version too, and you don't get there. And so we've got some projects set up in Claude on the left. Um, and by the way, Claude has web, web search access now. Um, uh, finally. So I'm like, hey, have you seen the sick update? I like using my, my words just to see like how he's gonna react. Doesn't get the message that he probably needs to search for this. That confirms. I'm like, yes, it's the first time I've seen search in action on Claude. Really cool. And then does all the research. It's like, okay, now we're on the level. Now I'm like, awesome, we're in the process of updating the Profoundly website and need some generalized photos like stock images that depict HubSpot experts and users often at a desk with laptop computer and images like that. Can you give me some image prompts for GPT to create some great photorealistic images for the Profoundly website? Gives me, uh, 9 I take the first one, I open up GPT, I copy the prompt in, and bam, there's my stock photo, right? Um, and now, like, so seeing what you did, Nico, like, I could keep it consistent, like, with this dude if I wanted to do it.

Do a prompt right here, be like Uh, make this guy drinking coffee.

Oh, don't, uh, maybe later. Okay.

Oh, that's the app. Got it.

Yeah. Uh, make this guy drink. I don't—

I know, I don't know if it'll work, but it would be fun with him drinking coffee.

See, and this is like outside of— so like, this is type editing, right, where you're just going like from the generated image to another request and then to another generated image. But there's also the aspect of like you can click into the image and then you can actually select parts of the image and just do the, the aspect of that. So like, you know, especially with the Captain Sprocket stuff, you know, some of the text didn't come out right or whatever, fine, just open the image, select that area of text, and then just type in what the text should have been and it puts it perfectly in there.

And by the way, it hits the text— I'm gonna say 95, 96%. It's spot on at this point, which is great.

Yeah, 95% for sure. Yeah, you'd have to— you have to give it something pretty complicated or like give it a complex direction with the text that it might misinterpret.

I challenge you today to create an image with supercalifragilisticexpialidocious today and see if the text works. If it does, tag me in socials, put the image up there. I want to see it.

Oh man, I might have to use my, my HubSpot spoof of that song, uh, now that you bring it, bring it up. Um, also Michelle with all the great ideas, uh, today, uh, I think graphic novel is in the making as well.

I'd buy it. I'd buy it yesterday.

Yeah, yeah, I'll start working on it.

So welcome to the future, everybody. I don't know what else you need to see at this point. Um, and again, this is the worst it's ever gonna be.

Listen, this is why we started waking up with AI over like years ago. Like years ago. I know we don't call it that anymore and But we've been doing it like the 3 of us on this screen. We've been waking up, we've been getting nerdy. There's a Slack channel that goes from here to the frickin moon of information at this point, maybe even circling on its way back at this point. Ladies and gentlemen, you got to wake up. You got to start playing with stuff. You got to start figuring out real use cases. I'm so nervous that there are so many marketers, so many business owners that are going to just get left in the dust. At this point, and I don't want that for your life. I, I, from the bottom of my heart, I don't want that for your life.

Yeah, I wonder, we should do some deep research, uh, with GPT. I wonder if there's stats for like how many people got left behind when the internet like happened, right? Um, I think it'll be more than that. Whatever that was. Uh, but yeah, there's no like give it to the end of the year. Like, that's, that's how much time you have, in my opinion, to do this on your own accord, at your own pace. Um, and then there's going to be forces from every which way working on you to either change immediately or like you know, no longer, no longer have a viable business because you can't keep up with costs and the speed of change and all that stuff we always talk about. Um, and this is how you learn. Like, this is how we're not behind the scenes, like, taking all week to craft this script, to show you images, and literally, like, learn George, all right, let's ask another question. Let's see, see if— like, it's not like we're— and it's not like we're gonna be like, oh man, like super disappointed if it doesn't get this right on the first try. We're just experimenting.

Like, you, you just unlock something that I take for granted, but I feel like I need to say. I live in this world where I am willing to ask the question Is it possible? Is it possible if I ask this thing to do this thing that it might not have even been built to do? Is it possible? Test, test, test. Challenge, test, test.

Yeah, try again. Try one more time. Like, if this doesn't finish, I'm gonna be like, oh, That's my bad. You told me to update like halfway through and I said maybe later, so obviously I need to go update.

Click the image because it says image created. Just click on it to expand it. I bet it's just at the preview because of the like—

other than that, or refresh.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh, oh, it might be because of the update.

I'm in the app, so—

oh yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't know why, but, um, I so very rarely use the app.

Yeah, I don't really use the app that much either. I don't know why either, but I just go online. Yeah, go from one to the other, maybe go like off one, on one. I mean, like, there you go.

Hyper-realistic image request. Oh, that's me. That's me trying to, to get George B. Thomas. It kept on trying to make you like 10 or 20 years older, man. I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, I don't look that old.

Um, all right. Yeah.

Oh yeah, absolute, man. The, uh, the MCP news is, uh, it's finally starting to blow up. People are finally starting to see what that's all about. I'm still waiting for people to properly call it the Master Control Program.

The master control.

That's, that's what it is, right?

Like, yeah, uh, there we go. Just had to close and reopen, and there you go. Boom. Come on, folks.

I mean, one line, make him drink coffee.

And actually, go back to the previous one.

His screens are the same, it looks like.

Not only that, but I think it is the same cup. Yep.

Oh my God, I didn't even notice the cup when I said make him drinking coffee the first time. I didn't even realize that.

Yeah, it's the same cup. That's amazing.

Same cup, same notebook written, like, yep, image.

I think it's the same, uh, plant on the shelf, like the windowsill. I think it's back there. Yeah, it is.

It's a little bit different, and we got a little bit different with the HubSpot here. Which, yeah, but still, probably, yeah, I could have wished for anything else to be changed besides that, right? And maybe not make this look like HubSpot, uh, well, but you know, go in and edit it. Yeah, you could go into another program, like, anyway, come on folks, like, if you're not in it, uh, Stop being dumb. Stop being irrational. Whatever you're— whatever reason you're using to not do this, just stop it. Just stop it. And, uh, think about your processes. Think about your image generation. Find those opportunities and let's grow. Have a great weekend, everybody.

Bye. See ya.