PromptBase: Save on Your API Costs and Sell Your Own Prompts Here

In the past few years, art made by programs OpenAI's DALL-E has gotten surprisingly compelling. These programs can translate a text prompt into literally award-winning art.

As the tools get more sophisticated, those prompts have become a craft in their own right. And as with any other craft, some creators have started putting them up for sale.

PromptBase is at the center of the new trade-in prompts for generating specific imagery from image generators, a kind of meta-art market.

Launched earlier this summer to both intrigue and criticism, the platform lets "prompt engineers" sell text descriptions that reliably produce a certain art style or subject on a specific AI platform.

When you buy the prompt, you get a string of words that you paste into Midjourney, DALL-E, or another system that you've got access to.

The result (if it's a good prompt) is a variation on a visual theme like nail art designs, anime pinups, or "futuristic succulents."

The prompts are more complex than a few words of description. They include keywords describing the important elements for a scene, and brackets where buyers can add their own variables to tailor the content.

PromptBase takes a 20 percent commission, and prompt writers retain ownership of their work — although the copyright status of AI art and prompts is largely untested waters.