SBU researchers launched the easy-to-use, AI-empowered interactive tool made for design novices
College students and anyone looking for extra income often face significant challenges when starting out, most of which are technology, content and design-specific. They have to develop a website, start social media promotions, maintain mailing lists and improve customer conversions, all with minimal resources.
While several companies have attempted to automate these processes with off-the-shelf tools that boast user-friendly design (Canva) and easy content generation (ChatGPT), there are no emerging platforms that provide both design and caption creation in one package. In fact, most platforms mainly focus on the ideation step of design. They also don’t accommodate user-specified prompts or context images to understand the design constraints, which are essential to maintain consistency and effectively communicate with a business’ target audience.
Tengfei Ma, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and member of the AI Innovation Institute at Stony Brook University, understood that creating eye-catching posts combining both appealing images and articulate captions can be challenging and time-consuming for everyday users.
To help tackle this challenge, Ma collaborated with Jian Zhao from the University of Waterloo and launched Influencer — an AI-driven platform designed to streamline the promotional post-design process. Their paper was recently accepted in CHI 2025, the top conference in the field of human-computer interaction.
Ma and Zhao evaluated Influencer’s effectiveness against Google Search + Figma on multiple aspects of creativity and assistance in promotional post design. They recruited 12 design enthusiasts who engage with graphic design on a daily basis, but are not proficient designers. Each of these participants was asked to perform three tasks within a set time limit, and then fill out a questionnaire rating these platforms.
Influencer performed better in all aspects — from design experience to the usefulness of in-built functionality to the completion rate.
“This is a clear demonstration of how Influencer significantly improves the ideation and design process,” said Ma. “It has the potential to help users generate more creative and higher-quality promotional posts than most existing design platforms available today.”
Read the full story by Ankita Nagpal on the AI Innovation Institute website.
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