The text instructions or descriptions given to a generative AI model to steer what it produces.
With Filigree though, it was a really different and somewhat jarring experience where I would produce thousands of outputs from a particular set of prompts and then I'd have to sift through the ones I liked and determine whether those were satisfactory to what I wanted to represent with this whole art project.
Matt DesLauriers, Matt DesLauriers on Challenging the Image
We started with a mean, snappy personality through the system prompts and it led to the person carrying the parrot constantly saying things like, “Can you be nicer, parrot?”
Ethan Chang and Quincy Kuang, Embodying AI at NeurIPS 2025: Creative AI Track