Move over, software. Prompts might just be the new oil.
Write the text strings that instruct the AI systems like ChatGPT And DALL-E 2 generating essays, articles, images and more has become a real profession, with salaries well into the six-figure range. Anyone can submit prompts, of course. But only certain prompts (e.g. “Create a watercolor of a soldier standing in the middle of a field, in the style of John Singer Sargent) accomplish very specific, desirable (or undesirable) things.
Writing fast takes skill and dedication, due to the black box and unpredictable nature of today’s cutting-edge AI systems. (See: Bing Chat’s wandering off the beaten track.) To further complicate matters, systems change frequently and respond to malicious promptsbypassing the guardrails that their makers have put in place.
But not every company or developer has the budget to hire a so-called fast engineer. Fortunately, there is the gig economy.
Prompt marketplaces, or e-commerce portals where users can buy, sell, or give away prompts “designed” for various AI systems, are a growing industry. When we first profile fast markets last July, there was only one major player. But since then, the landscape has widened considerably. Even a quick Google search brings up a dozen or more quick markets, with new ones added every month.
ChatXfor example, offers prompts suitable for ChatGPT as well as popular imaging systems such as DALL-E 2, Mid Road And Steady broadcast. neutron field sale prompts cover a slightly wider range of AI systems, including Disco Broadcast And Crayon.
Many market operators, like Miroslav Kostic of NeutronField, have no background in AI or even data science. They were hobbyists to begin with, experimenting with systems like Stable Diffusion but encountering obstacles to unleashing their full potential.
Picture credits: ChatX
“I’ve been playing with AI text-to-image models since Disco Diffusion first appeared in September 2021,” Kostic told TechCrunch in an email interview. “I spent countless hours trying to bring to life the ideas I had in mind for years – dystopian sci-fi landscapes and otherworldly spacescapes. However, I soon realized that creating coherent images using only words was a challenge.
Kostic largely runs NeutronField solo, personally reviewing every invite submitted by sellers to ensure it complies with marketplace content policy. (NeutronField does not allow prompts that can be used to generate celebrity deepfakes, depictions of graphic violence, or clones of copyrighted characters.)
For his part, Shahir Salehi, the founder of ChatX and a front-end designer with a degree in computer science and art, felt that the “time has come” to launch a competing marketplace for rapid exchange.
“There was a growing interest in the industry and a need for a more efficient and accessible way to connect fast generative AI engineers and users,” Salehi said via email. “As AI systems improve, they can automate more processes or tasks that once required human power, make sense of data on a scale no human could, and offer workers with streamlined and automated ways to perform manual and mundane tasks. This means that the demand for guests who can take advantage of these capabilities may also increase.”
Some market founders come from entirely different industries, no doubt looking to cash in on the Generative AI infatuation. Pisuth Daengthongdee, who started PromptSeaoriginally hoped to create an NFT marketplace, but was dissuaded by the formidable competition.
“The large user base of AI image generators such as Midjourney, DALL-E and later ChatGPT in December, with over a million userswas a major factor in our change,” Daengthongdee told TechCrunch.
Picture credits: PromptSea
What’s striking about fast markets is that few, if any, follow the same playbook. It’s uncharted territory, fast selling and buying, and each platform approaches it in different directions. very different.
For example, PromptSea “tokenizes” prompts on a block chain, creating an immutable record of the creation, redemption, and sale of each invite. There is a downside to prompts on PromptSea having to be “struckbefore they can be sold, a process that is not instantaneous — or free. But the benefit is that PromptSea-generated prompts have a traceable public trail, Daengthongdee says, making it easier to determine their rightful owner — and for that owner to get a share of resales.
“What we can do is monitor new prompts and remove suspicious ones on the website. This is similar to what other NFT marketplaces do,” Daengthongdee said. Like ChatX, PromptSea, which also sells AI-generated stories and artwork, moderates prompts that go against its quality and content guidelines.” In the long term, we will allow network moderators to review new prompts and receive incentives for their efforts,” Daengthongdee added.
NeutronField differentiates itself with its focus on “high-quality” text-to-image prompts as well as a store of physical goods like clothing, backpacks and laptop sleeves, Kostic says. As for ChatX, it follows a more conventional model, selling curated collections of prompts, Salehi explained.
ChatX pays invite creators $39 (in Canadian dollars) for each invite that successfully passes through the platform’s moderation queue. Invites on ChatX are currently free; ChatX only charges buyers for the custom prompts, which cost $39 (again, Canadian dollars).
Salehi says he plans to implement a commission-based structure in the future. NeutronField already charges a commission. The same goes for PromptSea, which collects a 10% fee on each transaction.
“I think the fast market is seen as part of the AI-assisted content creation that will disrupt the global creative market,” Daengthongdee said. “AI will eventually be used as a software tool for creators, much like Photoshop or Blender, and will help individuals or studios produce creative works at a lower cost.”
These are bold predictions, but it’s still early days for fast markets. They’re basic compared to the eBays, Alibabas, and Amazons of the world in terms of functionality, lacking rating and review tools and ways to customize and personalize selling prompts. They are also small operations with relatively few prompts to choose from; Perhaps tellingly, none of the founders I spoke to provided revenue or usage stats.
Picture credits: neutron field
Growth could come as generative AI continues to catch the eye. I wonder, however, how well these early companies will overcome the many challenges ahead.
Consider moderation. It’s relatively easy when it comes to a small market. But with scale, it gets harder – especially once bad actors enter the mix. It’s not hard to imagine, for example, a small army of sellers trying to flood a platform like ChatX with prompts for naked deepfakes. These prompts might never hit the market, but they would bog down the moderation queue to such an extent that it could impact legitimate prompt creators.
Partially driven by this concern, Chatx manually approves sellers for now and says it’s developing a system to allow users to report “problematic” invites that may escape moderation. PromptSea and NeutronField have no such restriction in place – until now.
Then there is the issue of copyright. Can prompt creators copyright their work and, if so, could this lead to situations where sellers infringe the rights of creators/owners by copying and then selling their work? Other than manual moderation, ChatX and NeutronField have no plans in place to prevent this. PromptSea thinks its blockchain-based approach will solve the provenance problem, but that’s an untested theory.
If there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that fast markets aren’t going away any time soon. They will evolve and change with the AI systems they are designed to trigger, developing in spurts and surely encountering obstacles along the way.
Kostic in particular didn’t seem discouraged.
“As AI platforms improve and new ones emerge, fast markets need to stay current and adapt accordingly,” Kostic said. “Prompt marketplaces must commit to staying on top of the latest AI developments and ensuring users can access the best prompts.”
