Word Market, Founder Fuel & Economy Hero 💬⛽

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Marketplace For Accurate Words

AI art isn’t just a fad anymore — it’s turned into a side hustle. 

In recent months, art made by programs like Midjourney and OpenAI’s DALL-E has picked up a lot of steam. And so hustlers have set up a marketplace (a kind of meta-art market) to make money off it. 

One of these marketplace platforms is PromptBase that launched earlier this summer. Here’s how it works.  

  • The platform lets hustling engineers take up the title of “prompt engineer” to sell text descriptions (coding) that can reliably produce a certain AI artwork. 
  • When you buy these text descriptions aka prompts, you can paste them into Midjourney, DALL-E, or another system and voila! You’ve got your piece. 
  • PromptBase takes a 20% commission, and prompt engineers retain ownership of their work — although the copyright status of AI art is largely untested waters.
Verge-generated prompt for “futuristic succulents.”

How flourishing is the hustle? 

Let’s just say it’s a great side job. The pay isn’t exorbitant; neither is the work. At least for now. For example, designer Justin Reckling, working with PromptBase, typically sells between three and five prompts per day, with each prompt averaging between $2 and $5. At this rate, a designer will have to create and sell at least a thousand prompts a month to make a decent living.

Do we really need prompt artists? 

We do if we want art with depth, colour schemes, some renaissance elements, etc.  Prompt artists/engineers are familiar with terms like “hyper-realistic,” “macro photography,” “octane render,” “hyper-detailed,” “cinematic lighting,” “long shot,” “middle shot,” etc. It gives them better understanding of how to add depth and detail to the artwork and how to control the distance and focus. 

For example, something like the nail art design (below) might include the positions of the hands, the angle of the pseudo-photographic shot, and instructions to produce different manicure styles and themes.

DALL-E nail art prompt by PromptBase

How is this any different from paying someone to draw a sketch for you?

It’s accessible! The easy-to-use tools of assisted art, music and voices enable individuals or small businesses to make their vision, like game, animation or VR experience, come true without investors and multi-million budgets.

However, from the artist standpoint, it gets frustrating. Once this tech matures, how can digital artists realistically make a career? Many artists and critics have called this business ‘a way to take the last semblance of creativity out of the equation!’



American Unicorns With Immigrant Founders 

"Immigrants have fuelled a rise in billion-dollar startups," reads the study from the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonprofit research institution that focuses in part on immigration issues. 

Highlights of the study:

  • 55% of billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants. And when you include companies in which immigrants were co-founders alongside native-born Americans, the total climbs to nearly two-thirds.
  • Billion-dollar startups by those born outside the U.S. have grown more than 500% since 2018.
  • The founders hail from 57 countries; India, with 66, has produced the most.
  • Around half of the immigrant founders of unicorns came to the U.S. on student visas.

Not just this, according to other recent research, immigrants launch more companies per person than native-born Americans and their firms pay a bit higher wages.

Images by BusinessToday.In


Services: The Economy Hero

While US manufacturing activity slows down, the services sector is what’s keeping the American economy afloat, recent data suggests.

Growth in the services sector accelerated in August for the second month in a row, according to the Institute for Supply Management index released Tuesday.

Reasons: Companies benefit from a slowdown in inflation and more reliable supply chains. 

Results: For now, the services sector is helping the US weather the global slowdown better than other countries. Seems like the risks of the US tumbling into a recession are lower than, say, in China or Germany, which rely more heavily on manufacturing.

The positive data also works to complicate predictions of the upcoming policy changes as US Federal Reserve policymakers are set to discuss interest rates on Sept. 21 and 22.


GameStop Numbers

The quintessential meme stock, GameStop’s stock price has long been untethered to business fundamentals. Here are some interesting number from its Q2 results.

  • $1.136 billion: Net sales
  • 4%: Decrease from the same period last year
  • $108.7 million: Losses during the quarter
  • 43%: Increase in losses from the same period last year
  • 10%: Increase in stock price in after-hours trading on Wednesday
Confused how that happened? So are we. 

Right as the market closed, GameStop announced a partnership with the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. There's a possibility that this partnership could have resulted in the uptick of the men stock price. But you might want to check Reddit sub-groups just to be sure. 



Shorts ⏳
Big Tech Reforms - The White House unveiled new rules to increase accountability in tech - mainly for Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta.

Malarial Trials - Clinical trials of a new malaria vaccine showed it could cut deaths by 70% by 2030.

Finger Lickin' Not Good - Dutch city - Haarlem becomes the first city in the world to ban meat advertising citing environmental concerns. 

Fighting Dollar - Zambia’s Kwacha is the world’s best performer against the dollar. How are they doing it? 

Advanced Social Search - Twitter has an advanced search that let's you find all brands' biggest tweets

50 Years of No Royalty - Five decades ago, Nike paid a college student $35 to design its swoosh logo without any promise of royalty. Definitely, one of the cheapest big brand designing ever


Stash Recommends: Tools to Explore
🖋️ Hypotenuse AIAn AI writing tool that helps produce original ideas and first drafts of blog posts, marketing copy, and product descriptions with just a few input keywords.

🪙 CryptohopperConfused about crypto? Or not getting enough return? Here's a platform that helps you trade cryptocurrencies automatically in the background without constantly keeping abreast.

👋 PatentPalSpeed up and simplify the process of writing and managing patents with this automated patent drafting tool.

📃 Rowan: An integrated patent drafting and management software for your wonderful startup innovation.


 
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