Let AI Add the Perfect Images to Your Content Without Any Extra Tools
When you're writing a blog post with a lot of text, adding variety can make it much more engaging for your readers. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) can certainly help with many aspects – like structuring your content, doing research, or even creating diagrams right within your prompt – there's one area that has traditionally been tough without extra tools: Images.
You usually need separate tools like Unsplash for stock photos or dedicated image generators, and then you have to manually insert those images into your blog post.
Wouldn't it be great if AI could just generate your blog post and automatically embed relevant images exactly where they make sense?
Or, if you have existing content, wouldn't it be handy to enrich it with images at just the right spots – ideally without needing to sign up for anything or configure extra settings?
I've been wondering about this for a while and have even developed a few tools to help. But recently, I stumbled upon an incredible open-source project called Pollinations.ai. Its core idea is wonderfully simple:
you describe the image you want right in a web address (URL), and it generates that image, serving it back to you as if it were always there.
You can try it yourself by simply opening this link in your browser and changing the [description] part to whatever you wish:
https://image.pollinations.ai/prompt/%5Bdescription%5D?width=800&height=400&ref=airabbit.blog
In this guide, I’ll show you how to use Pollinations.ai to create media-rich blog posts with the help of a chatbot like ChatGPT. We'll also explore how to use this same method to add images to content you already have.
You can apply this technique with virtually any chatbot you prefer, including Gemini, Claude, or others. They don't require any special setup; they simply generate the image URL and embed it directly into your blog post.
How It Works
To create a blog post rich with images, we'll break the process down into two main steps.
- First, your chatbot will generate the content (or you can provide existing text) and insert special placeholders for images.
- Then, in the second step, the AI will replace these placeholders with Pollinations.ai image URLs.
- Finally, you can copy the generated blog post to see it come to life.
Why Split the Prompt into Two Steps?
You might wonder why we separate these tasks. Sometimes, AI models can get a bit overwhelmed when asked to do too many things at once, even though they occasionally manage. Breaking down complex requests into simpler, separate steps (like using a 'chain of thought' approach) often leads to better and more reliable results. Of course, you can try combining them, but you'll likely find that splitting the tasks works more consistently.
Generating New Blog Posts with Images
Let's walk through the process of creating a brand new, image-rich blog post using your favorite chatbot.
Step 1: Generate Content with Image Placeholders
Open your chosen chatbot and enter the following prompt. It will then ask you for some details; just provide them as you see fit.
You are a blog post generator. Before creating the blog post, ask the user for these parameters:
1. What topic would you like the blog post to be about?
2. How long should the blog post be? (word count or general length preference)
Once you have these details, create a blog post that includes:
- A compelling title with proper heading (#)
- Publication date in italics
- Image placeholders using this format: [IMAGE_PLACEHOLDER: description of what image should show]
- Well-structured content with ## subheadings
- Engaging introduction and conclusion
Wait for the user's response before proceeding.
After the article is generated, enter this next prompt:
Replace all [IMAGE_PLACEHOLDER: description] instances in the provided text with proper Pollinations.ai image syntax using this EXACT format:
Convert the placeholder description into appropriate keywords for image generation. Do NOT skip any placeholders - replace ALL of them with working Pollinations.ai image links.
Now, the chatbot will begin replacing the placeholders with URLs that describe the images to be generated by Pollinations.ai.