AI Generated Art and the future of QR Code Design
QR codes are almost 30 years old, but their black and white pixelated appearance has stayed the same. Generative A has the potential to change that.
A developer experimenting with ControlNet, released code that will allow anyone to fuse art with functional QR codes. And in the not so distant future, brands will be able to make QR Code Experiences that not only share story and product details, but are also enjoyable to look at.
TL; DR AI art QR codes don’t work that well right now for brand marketers, but Brij built an arguably better alternative that gives brand marketers complete control of the QR code design. You can turn any logo, design, or image into a scannable QR code. Try it here!
A brief primer on QR Code Design
QR codes have been around since 1994. Yet, their appearance hasn’t changed at all. Frankly, QR codes are ugly and jarring. As a result, they are sized down and placed in the corner of an advertisement or the back of a package. Out of sight is out of mind. Consequently, its common for brands experience low engagement with QR codes.
To date, brands have a limited toolset to improve the look and feel. They can:
- Add a logos to the center
- Swap black & white for a brand color palette.
- Change dot & corner style from square to round
But the result is still is not that different from the original concept.
Then along came Generative AI.
In the last year, use of AI has boomed. Most of the conversation is focused on large language models (LLM) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. However, AI is also spreading to design with text-to-image modeling. The most popular generative AI design models are
- DALL-E
- Midjourney
- Stable Diffusion.
Last week, an artistic twist on QR Codes was introduced via Reddit when two developers in China mixed QR Codes with ControlNet AI. ControllNet is a text-to-image AI model based on StableDiffusion. It lets you copy from reference images. Which allowed the developers to fuse together artistic imagery with functioning QR codes. The result was scannable QR Codes that looked like works of art.
Here are some of the images that were created:
