How AI Tools Are Helping Professionals Present Themselves

It has become an axiom in digital marketing that the currency of our time is no longer information but attention. Professionals who want themselves and their businesses to stand out from the competition must capture the attention of their colleagues, business partners, and clients and then follow through by creating strong personal experiences.

With competition intense and time limited, more professionals are turning to a growing array of AI-powered platforms and software tools to optimize workflows and deliver the experiences their clients and contacts expect—and to AI image generators like Portrait Pal to help them visually brand themselves and their businesses.

Large AI models that generate images on demand received a lot of early negative press for their initial shortcomings. The AI didn’t always know how to draw eyes or hands. Some early AI models became notorious for creating monstrosities, merging human figures unexpectedly with the surrounding environment.

Once AI mastered human shape, it was still subject to racial bias. Reports in 2023 noted that people of color who attempted to use AI to generate personal portraits found that the AI frequently altered their skin color or made their features look more Caucasian. This reflected the fact that, at the time, AI models were being trained on data sets that were overwhelmingly white.

Today, however, more advanced AI image generators are integrated into the daily lives of many professionals. In fact, AI image generators have become so pervasive and so much more sophisticated than their earlier iterations that by 2024, many AI researchers declared that AI-generated “deepfakes” (photorealistic images depicting either real or fictional people) would soon become undetectable.

While this new technology can have more sinister applications, many people are using AI models to create and test compelling visual representations of themselves and their work. Professionals turn to AI to generate first drafts of a new logo, create profile photos for social media, and provide galleries of visual samples of AI-generated customers using or wearing a product, to name just a few uses.

Reasons for the popularity of AI in personal and professional branding include its speed and cost-effectiveness. Freelancers and owners of start-ups can generate options for photos in seconds rather than pursuing the time and expense of professional photography. The growing variety of AI tools offers users control, creativity, and iterability.

A busy professional can spend an evening experimenting with different visual approaches, seeing the resulting options immediately, and then fine-tuning how they want to present their personality and expertise to the market. AI tools can also be used to generate outlines for a presentation or build a visual presentation based on an outline. From resumes to product proposals to thank-you cards for clients, professionals are using AI to create consistent, high-quality visuals that communicate their message.

The professional headshot is probably the most well-known and possibly the most advanced (because its widespread use has led to frequent iterations) application of AI tools in personal and professional branding. These tools create polished, professional headshots with limited effort or cost on the user’s part; all the tool needs are photos of the user for reference.

Portrait Pal’s model, for example, is based on stable diffusion but has been further trained and fine-tuned to generate more realistic headshots. It has the flexibility and versatility to provide professional photos for those from widely diverse demographics, and, of course, backgrounds are generated as well.

That means that the results are limited only by the creativity of the professional. If you can visualize it in your mind, you can probably make it. A freelance artist can generate a dark, dramatic background shot. A mountaineering athlete and biohacker can create a rock-climbing portrait. A young executive can create a relaxed, laid-back business shot, and a gardener, landscaper, or biologist can generate an outdoor shot that places them in their element.

Other benefits of AI portrait generators include cleaning up a professional image. Even the most competent professionals have bad hair days, but AI portrait tools can easily touch up hair and makeup or add a hairstyle to help professionals present their best selves.

One under-utilized application of this technology in personal branding (though tools can assist with this) is the conceptual portrait. Distinct from the headshot, the conceptual portrait is focused on emotional content; the image captures a powerful theme such as isolation, desire, excellence, or pushing the limits.

These portraits use symbolic elements to convey a message. A person standing alone and downcast on a dark street, with the other pedestrians blurred, can communicate isolation or depression, while a person standing in a vibrant field of golden wheat, gazing up into a brilliant sunrise, can communicate a fresh start.

Both images might be helpful to a mental health professional, the owner of a yoga studio, or a wellness coach in communicating messages about the problems their services address and the experiences they offer. AI-generated conceptual portraits can allow professionals and businesses to make bold statements and showcase their personalities and values. They also provide a means of standing out from more traditional and “canned” brand photography.

AI tools bring the creative power of traditional photoshoots into the home office. The synthetic photorealism of AI portrait tools can allow professionals to communicate their identity, mission, and purpose with great impact and authenticity. AI portraiture and AI-enhanced presentations can help professionals build trust, generate more networking opportunities, and communicate the story of a career or an endeavor.

If the currency of this generation is attention, the language is still a story. What an AI-generated headshot, a conceptual portrait, a presentation outlined and visualized with the help of AI, and an AI-generated gallery illustrating the use and impact of a product or service all have in common is that they communicate a narrative to the viewer.

The ways professionals use these tools today probably constitute only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. With the arrival of AI-generated video and advances in document automation, data synthesis, and the application of AI tools to client relationship management, it is fascinating to speculate about how tomorrow’s professionals might use artificial intelligence to present themselves and share their stories.