So with the rise of popular AI apps like MidJourney and Leonardo many people are asking,
"Will AI replace t-shirt designers for print on demand?" In this video I'm going to share
with you what I think will happen and answer that question by showing you popular t-shirt
designs on Amazon and Redbubble and what AI can and can't do. Let's go!!
Hey everyone it's Juna with Detour Shirts. In this video I wanted to talk about AI. More specifically
what AI can do as far as replacing a T-shirt designer how well is AI equipped to take that
over totally and I'm going to show you what it does today I can't predict what it's going to
do in the future but I'm going to show you some of the limitations of AI today and what kinds of
things to look out for and what kinds of things you can do with AI but the kinds of things that
you may want to do yourself maybe using AI as a tool but not necessarily using AI as an automatic
thing to make t-shirt designs over and over and over again so the thing I want to do is I'm going
to show you what kinds of things are popular right now and we're gonna see if AI can do it
or not do it and we'll take it from there so let's get into the internet right now and I'll show you
some popular designs for t-shirts with print on demand okay so the first place I wanted to
go to is Amazon merch on demand I'm using pretty merch Pro Plus to look at the most popular designs
with print on demand on Amazon so if we scroll down you can see very easily this is nice that
pretty merge Pro Plus does this on the research tab you can see these are the top selling designs
on Amazon right now with print on Demand with Amazon merch on Demand right so let's see how
many of them have words in it almost all of them right so one two three like these two don't but
that's Mickey Mouse and that's grogu from Star Wars so you can't do that so I'm taking that
out automatically words words words words words words words words words words right look at this
all words uh this one doesn't so there's one out of the top I don't know how far did we go down
five oh this is 6 12 18 24 like in the top 31 and 30. uh words words words words words words words
words words so you get the idea this one's not but this is also I think a trademark copyright
copyrighted stuff uh and there's right so words play a very very important part in print on demand
t-shirts at least on Amazon and I think in most print on demand places if you look at graphic
t-shirts almost always eighty percent of the time maybe even ninety percent of the time there's
words on it so if we go to Mid Journey let's just use mid-journey as one of them you can see right
here I wrote a vector T-shirt design with the words fifth grade Vibes because we saw that on
there and look at this it cannot do words right so if you are trying to use a mid-journey or any
other print on demand site currently right now and type in the words that you want it doesn't
spit it out right it understood that I wanted a flower and so it focused on the flower but look
at these words they're nonsense words right here's another one a vector t-shirt design that says I
heart my boyfriend which we saw here um I love Hot dads I love my boyfriend look how simple that is
to make without AI you just need text and a hard graphic but using AI it doesn't understand that
there's a disconnect it did the heart thing but it didn't do the text because it can't understand
how to lay out text how to even draw a text as of right now and they may change this may change
in the future but one of the limiting factors of AI currently is doing anything with ticks
so if you're wanting to compete with AI designs and think uh want something just put in text any
text right any any types of text uh and it can be as simple as this a I can can't do that hey
I can't do that yeah I can't do any of these it maybe could do this silhouette of a dog with a
checkerboard thing but again um that's not the most popular thing on here or if we look at it
Graphics by itself at least on Amazon by itself is the most popular so you may be thinking well
let's go to another print on demand site and see I know Redbubble and T public are more graphic heavy
so let's go to Redbubble now and I'll show you the kinds of things that sell there so you can kind of
get an idea will AI replace t-shirt designers for Redbubble then and obviously not here on merch on
demand but will it do it for Redbubble all right so here we are on Redbubble and yes Redbubble has
more graphic design t-shirts where it's just a graphic and not text so let's look on here
this is the best selling T-shirts we see text text text text here's just a graphic so yes a lot more
just Graphics just a graphic just a graphic just a graphic and AI is actually pretty good at doing
stuff like this so let's see this one you see the monkey monkey with headphones if I did that here
and I tried to do one you can see I typed in this prompt and it did give me a monkey with headphones
and kind of close and it does a pretty good job at that let's do another example so take a look
at this one here's a fox with an astronaut helmet if I go here I did one fox with the astronaut
helmet pretty good I think some of these would work on a t-shirt but here's the deal copying
other people's design is not a great strategy for t-shirt or anything really you have to be
creative and creative which is more unique and coming up with something that people haven't seen
before that is what sells t-shirts on Redbubble just coming in here and saying oh I'm gonna do
this exact same thing I'm gonna do this exact same thing that's not gonna work because these
people already have built up so many sales that they're gonna rank higher and they know that this
is the original one and it's just not going to be as good as the original so there's that and
the thing that AI cannot do is be creative have a vision have intuition all those things those
things need to be added in here so you'll still have to come up with something new and creative
and put that in as image as the prompt right AI is only as creative as the creative prompts that you
put in there it's not going to be able to design an award-winning t-shirt design for you just by
just putting please create a popular design for me and it's not going to spit out anything so that's
one of the downsides of AI yes it does amazing graphics and can kind of copy what's already out
there but it can't make original things without you thinking of what the original thing is going
to be hopefully that makes sense so AI is a great tool if you are already creative and can think of
things outside of the box that things that people haven't done before but things that people and the
audience really would want to see so you have to incorp create all those same things that you're
going to do as a T-shirt designer and use AI as a tool to create something that people want to buy
so the next point I want to bring across is AI is great and can make some great designs but it's not
at a point yet where you can just put in something there and it's already ready for print on demand
t-shirt so there's lots of things you have to do with AI art you have to upscale it because usually
it's 10 24 but 10 24 where you need it at least 4 500 by 5400 for T-shirt design there's usually a
background that you have to remove it doesn't have it's not a transparent PNG it's actually
a JPEG when you see it so you're gonna have to convert it remove the background convert it to
PNG and it's on it's not laid out yet either so when you get the design usually uh you like we
saw on the Amazon example you're going to have to get the design and then put text with it and then
kind of move things around and lay everything out so you're still going to need some kind of
skill to put it all together and make sure that it works cohesively on a t-shirt design in that
tall rectangle so there's lots of little things that you may need to fix even when you remove the
background too sometimes there's little things in there a little things that need to be fixed lines
around things that you may not have seen until you zoom up and not to mention some of the graphic
design faults in there sometimes there's an extra finger sometimes there's a extra color where it
shouldn't be and so on and so forth so for that reason I don't think AI is at a point right now
to take over anybody's T-shirt design business it's definitely not a just point and click and
create Design After Design After design endlessly like people were thinking that will actually get
people to add more designs I think it's still at a point where it's a tool just like grabbing
clip art just like grabbing fonts and things and putting it together I don't think it's at a point
where it's giving someone super a super amount of advantage that big Advantage for AI currently is
only that it can create designs that there's no clip art for right you can use your imagination
and create something there may not be a clip art for a half unicorn and half mermaid or something
like that where it's really specific and maybe AI could do that by combining two things together or
maybe it couldn't but you see what I mean there's there's some advantages to AI by creating things
that aren't already out there in the wild with clip art so I'm back on Amazon merch on demand I
wanted to show you one more thing that I would do if you're trying to compete with AI or do things
that AI can't do and that is doing nice grouping so look at this one right here you can see this
whole grouping a dinosaur alphabet a I cannot do this especially with the text but just if
you wanted all these dinosaurs lined up like this or having dinosaurs that match it's really hard
to do with AI same thing with this one right here you can see another version of dinosaur alphabet
this one is all in the same style and they all you know work together and is put nicely kind of
laid out and a human did this not in AI because it takes so much skill to do this trying to put it in
some kind of pattern so let me show you like I did this on Discord as well trying to test out AI and
this is what I came up with and you can see some of the dinosaurs are okay but some of them have
some problems right they're crossing over they're like missing a head there's two tails on this one
and so on and when we don't know like the names of these dinosaurs either because it says I said
um you know do Vector art with 26 dinosaurs each representing different letter of the alphabet it
didn't know what to put on here I mean they knew alphabet but I don't know if this is that kind of
dinosaur and things like that so those kinds of things those kinds of details uh AI has a really
hard time to do so again a long story short AI is not at a point right now that I think is going to
take over anybody's t-shirt print on demand business I think it's a good tool right now
to get some really creative graphic designs but you're gonna have to be as a T-shirt designer
like I've shown on some of my videos you're gonna have to use that design take away the background
put other things around it make it a great layout uh even if you're just gonna do a graphic like
we've seen on Redbubble you're still gonna have to be the designer that knows how to upskill it
and knows how to remove the background and knows how to place it and use the right colors there's
still a lot of creative parts to that and finding the right kinds of things to actually put in the
prompts to get a design that people actually want to buy you can't just randomly create stuff on
with AI and expect people to to buy those things if you haven't done any of the research or haven't
done any of the creative prompts or haven't done any of those kinds of things so yes AI is great
but it's not at a point currently where I think it's gonna take over anyone's graphic design or
t-shirt design for print on demand so until they fix all those problems that I mentioned
I think you're very very safe by doing t-shirt designs on your own and creating and using AI
as a tool hope this video is really helpful for you if you want to see what AI can really
do with t-shirts I have an AI playlist I'll put it right here for you to watch you can
see all things AI again it's not a One-Stop shop that's going to give you everything you need to
get lots and lots of sales for print on demand but it is a great tool to use thanks again for
watching and as always guys keep creating and keep learning obviously on the next one bye