The Perfect AI YouTube Thumbnail

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The Perfect Thumbnail

For many YouTube channels, video thumbnails are more important than the video itself. Like a good headline, the perfect thumbnail stops the scroll, enticing viewers to click through and watch the video.

People with surprising reactions. Hyperbole. Stark colors. Words with lots of question marks. These are the stuff of YouTube thumbnail gold.

It’s no wonder, then, that uber successful YouTubers like Mr Beast spend up to $10k on a single thumbnail.

You can’t afford that (probably). I can’t afford that. Luckily, AI is here to save the day!

I’ve been testing the new Ideogram 3.0 which came out last week, and the AI image generator is superb at creating compelling, weird, text-forward, scroll-stopping thumbnails.

Here’s a video I made showing the exact process I’ve been using for AI thumbnails.

(You can also watch it directly on YouTube here)

Basically, if you can dream up a visual concept for a thumbnail, Ideogram can create it. And the AI image generator’s propensity for visually dramatic images makes it the perfect fit for the “grab you by the eyeballs” world of YouTube thumbnail creation.

If you need people in your thumbnail, just drop it into Canva after making it with Ideogram, upload your person image, use the AI background remover, position them, and you’re good to go.

That’s how I made thumbnails like the one for this video: