Since image generators arrived, a title has been circulating: “prompt artist”. Is it a new profession? Our view, presented as such: knowing how to write a prompt is not enough. The value lies elsewhere, and it looks a lot like professions we already know.
The prompt is just one step
A prompt is an instruction. What makes it a usable result is everything around it. The real work looks like a chain:
- Brief: understanding the real need.
- Intention: deciding on the tone, the universe, what you want people to feel.
- Generation: exploring, testing, iterating.
- Selection: choosing, and above all letting go.
- Direction: keeping consistency from one visual to the next.
- Correction: redoing what does not hold.
- Finalisation: retouching, formats, delivery.
The value is in the eye
Writing an instruction is within everyone’s reach. Recognising, among a hundred images, the one that works, and knowing why, takes visual culture, experience and a point of view. It is the eye of an art director, a photographer, an editor. The words change; the underlying profession does not.
New profession or skill?
In our view, writing instructions is becoming a skill, like knowing how to use retouching or editing software. It adds to an existing profession rather than replacing it. A title may appear on business cards; what will matter is the ability to lead a project from start to finish.
What this changes for a client
For a company, the useful question is not “who can prompt?” but “who answers for the result, its consistency with my brand and its use?”. Choose a partner for their eye, their method and their accountability, not for their mastery of one particular tool.
To go further: the CNC’s AI observatory (in French) · the Afdas study on generative AI (in French)
Key takeaway. A prompt is an instruction; the value is in the eye, the direction and the selection. See our Business video.
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