How to Automate AI Side Hustles | The Story of Fully Automating Image Generation with Python and SeaArt
To start with the conclusion,
the true nature of the "exhaustion" in AI side hustles
comes from the sheer amount of manual work.
Entering prompts every time,
pressing buttons,
checking images,
and then entering them again...
If you do this forever, you'll naturally get burned out, right? Haha.
I work as a web marketer while doing AI image generation as a side hustle,
and wanting to do something about this "manual labor hell,"
I eventually decided to take the plunge into automation using Python and Selenium.
I'm going to write exactly about that experience here.
I especially want this to be read by people who feel,
"I'm interested in AI side hustles, but isn't it impossible to do it manually every single day?"
First of all, what does "automation" actually involve?
It's often misunderstood, but
"automation with AI"
doesn't mean the AI does everything for you.
At the very least, what I'm doing is
building a program that
"operates the AI tool (SeaArt) on the browser in place of a human."
I use two things.
Python: A programming language. It's simple and relatively easy for beginners to get into.
Selenium: An open-source tool that allows you to
automatically control web browsers like Chrome or Firefox via programs.
By using Selenium,
"entering prompts into text boxes,"
"clicking the generate button,"
"switching to the next prompt,"
and other such operations can be replicated by a program.
In other words, the program performs the tasks
that a human used to do by hand.
If you thought "automation = AI stuff,"
doesn't that change your image of it a bit?
What you can do with SeaArt x Python x Selenium
What I actually built
is this kind of system.
When you start the program,
image generation on SeaArt runs automatically
using the prompts specified in advance.
The only thing you do manually
is start the program.
After that, it will keep generating images on its own up to
about 116 images,which is SeaArt's daily generation limit.
Furthermore, depending on your settings,
you can also distribute the number of images per category.
For example...
Category A: 50 images
Category B: 50 images
Category C: 16 images
Like that,
you can generate multiple patterns of images
all at once in a single run.
Compared to when I was doing this manually,
this is a completely different story.
Why I use SeaArt
There are really a lot of image generation AI tools
out there right now.
Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Adobe Firefly...
There is no shortage of options.
The reason I chose and use SeaArt among them
is honestly just because that's where I started.
Rather than being stuck and unable to move because you're indecisive about choosing a tool,
it is definitely faster to pick one and dig deep into it.
This applies to side hustles in general.
Since SeaArt is a tool that runs on a web browser,
it works well with Selenium,
making it easy to build an automation system.
The question of whether Python is difficult
"Programming is impossible for me"
I think many people feel that way.
To be honest,
you don't need to be able to write everything yourself from the start.
Nowadays, if you tell ChatGPT or Claude,
"Write code for Selenium that clicks this button on this browser,"
it will give you code that works almost as-is.
It takes a certain amount of time to reach the level where you can "read, understand, and fix" code,
but if your goal is just to "build something that works,"
the method of proceeding while interacting with AI is realistic.
I myself didn't write it perfectly from the start.
Errors occurred, I asked the AI, fixed them, and ran it again.
I built the system through that repetition.
What changes by automating
I want you to imagine something for a moment.
What would happen if you tried to generate 116 images a day manually?
Assuming it takes anywhere from several dozen seconds to a few minutes per image, you have to enter a prompt, wait for it to generate, enter the next one, wait again... and so on.
Doing this 116 times.
For most people, side hustle time is usually at night after work or during small gaps in their schedule on days off, right?
The question is, do you really want to spend all that limited time just clicking away?
When you automate, you can do other things after starting the program.
You can check the generated images, prepare them for listing, or think about the next set of prompts.
I believe the biggest benefit of automation is being able to spend your time on the tasks in your side hustle that actually require thinking.
Things to do before building an automation system
Let me get back to the point.
I've been talking a lot about automation, but it's not like everything will go perfectly just by running a program.
All a program does is repeat a fixed set of procedures exactly as instructed.
Therefore,
what kind of prompts to use
which categories to use and how many images to generate
which of the generated images to use
These decisions have to be made by a human.
Automation cuts down on the time you spend doing manual labor, but it doesn't cut down on the time you spend using your brain. It would be more accurate to say that it allows you to focus on that instead.
Saying automation equals making things easier is only half right; it's more accurate to say that automation equals being able to focus on thinking.
What I learned from actually running it
What I realized after actually running the automation using the
SeaArt x Python x Selenium setup is that
the 'time spent building the system' and the 'time the system runs'
are completely separated.
You spend your time with intense focus while building the system.
But once it's in a working state,
the program just runs on its own.
This feeling is a bit addictive. lol
Of course, there are times when the program stops working due to SeaArt's specification changes.
Since Selenium is affected by changes in browser structure,
maintenance is not zero.
Even so,
compared to clicking everything manually every time,
the way I use my time has changed dramatically.
AI Side Hustle x Automation: How to think about it if you're going to do it
The term 'AI side hustle'
is something you see constantly these days, isn't it?
But in reality,
the time efficiency is completely different between those who stop at 'using AI to do tasks'
and those who 'automate the tasks of using AI' itself.
Do you want to earn money?
Do you want to save time too?
Is it both?
If so,
choosing to invest time in building a system
will be the most effective in the long run.
At first, you might think 'Python is impossible for me,' but
we are now in an era where AI writes the code for you.
The barrier to entry is completely different from three years ago.
SeaArt is fine, and other tools are fine too.
Start by building a system to automate one task.
Just doing that gives you the feeling that the landscape of your side hustle has changed.
Only those who build systems
can become free from time.
That is the kind of world it is.