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Infographics and explainers

AI image models cannot render a chart with correct data or legible labels, so the workable approach is to generate the visual style and composition and add every number and word in a design tool afterwards.

Infographics are where people are most often disappointed, because the obvious request — "an infographic showing X" — is exactly what models cannot do. What they can do is produce a strong, consistent visual language you then fill with real content. That is a smaller promise and a much more useful one.

What this cannot do

Every chart an image model produces has invented data, unreadable axis labels and often bars that do not match their own scale. Treat the output as a mood board for a designer, never as a finished figure. If a reader could act on a number in the image, it must not have been generated.

4 prompts

Infographic style frame, empty

A layout to drop real content into. The "no text" makes it usable rather than decorative.

Clean infographic layout template with empty panels and placeholder shapes, flat vector style, three-colour palette of navy, coral and off-white, generous white space, thin dividing rules, no text anywhere

Things to change

  • — "dark mode, charcoal and mint"
  • — "editorial magazine layout" for something less corporate

Isometric process illustration

Any step-by-step explainer. Add the step labels yourself.

Isometric illustration of an abstract multi-stage process, connected geometric platforms at different heights linked by flowing paths, soft gradients, muted pastel palette, subtle long shadows, no text or icons

Things to change

  • — "five stages" to fix the count
  • — "technical blueprint style" for engineering topics

Comparison split, abstract

Before-and-after and this-versus-that pieces.

Symmetrical composition split down the centre, warm amber on the left and cool blue on the right, abstract geometric forms mirrored on each side, flat design, clean edges, generous space for labels at the top and bottom

Things to change

  • — "three-way split" for a triple comparison
  • — "gradient blend at the centre" for a spectrum rather than a binary

Data-viz texture, decorative

Backgrounds and card images for analytical content, where it should suggest data without pretending to be data.

Abstract composition suggesting data visualisation, overlapping translucent bars and thin plotted curves, no axes and no labels, muted analytics palette, soft shadows, off-white background, decorative rather than readable

Things to change

  • — "single accent colour on grey" to sit under text
  • — "dense and busy" versus "sparse and calm"

Common questions

Why can't AI make a real infographic?
Two reasons at once. It cannot render more than a few words of legible text, and it has no access to your data, so any chart it draws is invented. The composition is generatable; the content is not.
What is the practical workflow?
Generate the style frame with no text, then build the real chart in a plotting library or design tool and place it into the frame. You get a consistent look across a series without any invented numbers.
Are AI-generated charts ever acceptable?
Only as decoration, where no reader could mistake them for data — a blurred chart behind a heading, for instance. The moment a number is legible, someone will read it, and it will be wrong.

Get the numbers right too