I Made $2 Describing Invisible Art to a Robot 🎨🫥💸

Is This the Future of Creativity, Madness, or Monetized Imagination?

“Close your eyes and describe what you see.”

That’s what the app told me on Day One.

By Day Three, I was yelling about invisible giraffes on Mars to a robot… and getting paid for it.

Yes, this is real. Sort of.

In a world where AI can generate pictures from words, there’s now an app that pays you to describe art that doesn’t exist — yet. Not draw it. Not paint it. Just imagine it out loud, and tell a robot what you see. The weirder, the better. And for each description, you earn a small reward. I made $2 in 24 hours, whispering about things no one could see. Describing invisible art to a robot has become my new favorite side hustle — and possibly the strangest gig economy job in existence.

Let’s dive into this bizarre trend, my full experiment, and what this says about imagination, AI, and whether our thoughts are now officially for sale.

Welcome to the Age of Monetized Imagination

We live in an age where your thoughts, feelings, footsteps, and even your fridge door movements can be monetized. So it was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to turn imagination into cash.

Enter Deskribe.AI — a beta-stage app that pays users to verbally describe imaginary artworks. According to the developers, the app is training a multimodal AI to “learn the boundaries of creativity.” But let’s be honest: it’s paying humans to invent weird things so the AI can learn how to hallucinate better.

The premise is simple:

1. Open the app.
2. Hit the record button.
3. Describe an invisible piece of art.
4. Submit.
5. Earn.

I had to try it.

Day 1: “Please Describe Something You Can’t See”

My first task was called Prompt #001: “Describe a statue made entirely of fog.”

So I did. Out loud. Alone in my room.

“I see a 12-foot figure shaped like a ballerina, made of swirling vapor that constantly shifts with the wind. Her arms stretch out, trailing mist, and her head is a glass orb filled with lightning bugs…”

When I finished, a robotic voice said: “Thank you. Submission logged. $0.10 added.”

Was it art? Was it nonsense? I didn’t care. I was hooked.

Why Would Anyone Pay for This?

The app says it’s “training artificial imagination.” That means developers want their AI to learn how to invent like humans do — not from data, but from pure creativity. Think of it as giving the AI a playground of bizarre, human-made dreams to learn from.

Instead of feeding it real art, they’re feeding it descriptions of unreal art, hoping the AI will learn to think like us. And humans? We’re the guinea pigs, but at least we get $2 worth of peanuts.

It’s also worth noting: these descriptions are tagged with emotional tone, vocal cadence, and abstract elements, which can be used to train advanced neural networks that interpret subjectivity — an area AI still struggles with. So yes, your absurd imaginary painting of a screaming banana in a suit might one day help an AI understand surrealism.

Day 2: Things Get Weirder

Prompt #007: “Describe a painting that only exists when no one’s looking.”

At this point, I was in deep.

“It’s called ‘Retreat of the Witness.’ The canvas appears blank until you leave the room. Then it blossoms into vibrant hues of betrayal — magentas, bruised greens, colors that shame you for ever turning away…”

I received $0.15 for this. But more importantly, I felt genuinely proud of my nonsense.

The app let me rate how “inspired” I felt. Then it asked how “emotional” I got during the description. I realized this wasn’t just about training AI to recognize descriptions — it was about collecting emotional tone.

That’s when I started to suspect this was bigger than art.

Are They Paying for Art — Or for Thought Patterns?

The more I used Deskribe.AI, the more I realized: this isn’t just art training. It’s data mining for your imagination.

Each recording didn’t just ask what I saw, but also how I saw it, why I saw it, and what it made me feel. The system logs pauses, excitement, sadness, confusion — mapping not just creativity, but the emotional structure of thinking itself.

This could be used for:

• AI that creates original art from scratch.
• Marketing tools that tap into subconscious desires.
• Cognitive models of human imagination.
• Or maybe…to make ads that haunt your dreams.

Suddenly, my $2 gig felt like a sci-fi movie waiting to go wrong.

Day 3: My Friends Join, Chaos Ensues

I invited two friends to try the app. We turned it into a game: each of us would take turns describing something more ridiculous than the last.

Friend #1:

“A mural painted by octopuses underwater, made from coral ink and bioluminescent regret.”

Friend #2:

“A 3D sculpture of time itself: half clock, half wilting flower, humming softly in a language no one speaks anymore.”

We laughed for hours. It felt like a modern poetry slam hosted by HAL 9000. But the best part? Every submission earned cash.

Sure, tiny amounts — but the feeling of being paid to be weird? Priceless.

The Gig Economy Has Officially Entered Your Brain

This isn’t the first time your thoughts were commodified. Social media sells your attention. Wellness apps monetize your moods. But this? This is direct payment for imagination.

It opens a philosophical question:

If you’re paid to imagine, are you still the owner of your ideas?

Because once you describe something and submit it to an AI, that concept becomes training data. The robot now “knows” it — and you’ve given it away for a dime.

We used to say ideas are free. Now? They’re $0.10 per audio file.

The Invisible Art Marketplace: What Happens to My Descriptions?

Where do these creations go?

According to the app’s FAQ, all user submissions are stored in a neural repository used to teach a next-gen visual language model. Some of the top-rated user descriptions may be turned into actual AI-generated images — potentially exhibited in digital galleries, with credit given (sometimes).

Others are processed into audio-visual experiments, converted into NFTs, or used for marketing demos. You agree to all this in the terms and conditions, of course, but who reads those?

So, yes. My fog ballerina might one day be sold as a virtual sculpture at an art-tech festival. I may never see it. But at least I got paid $0.10 for the idea.

Could This Be the Future of Art Jobs?

Let’s not dismiss this as a gimmick. Think about it:

• Writers: Paid to describe surreal scenes or characters.
• Artists: Asked to imagine impossible installations and get rewarded.
• Poets: Monetizing metaphor.
• Kids: Earning pocket money by describing dream creatures.

In a world where creativity is more valuable than ever—and AI struggles with originality—humans might become imagination laborers. The job title? Prompt Engineer. Or better: Imagination Worker.

We’ve seen “text-to-image” explode in the last few years. Now we’re seeing “imagination-to-cash” as a new pipeline.

Final Days: Is This Sustainable?

By Day 5, I had earned $2.05. Not much, but I didn’t feel cheated. I felt…recognized. Like my thoughts had value.

But I also felt exhausted. Coming up with strange ideas on demand is surprisingly draining. Creativity, it turns out, isn’t infinite. Especially when tied to a timer and a payment system.

Would I keep using the app? Maybe. In moderation. It’s fun, it’s weird, and for creatives, it’s like a mental gym. But as a long-term side hustle? You’d need deep imagination reserves — or just a high tolerance for absurdity.

The Ironic Beauty of Invisible Art

There’s something beautifully ironic about describing art that can’t be seen — to a machine that can’t feel. And yet, this app shows us that even the unseen has value, if you package it right.

The real question is:

Are we creating art for ourselves… or feeding machines that will eventually out-create us?

Either way, the journey is strangely satisfying. You imagine. You speak. You get paid. And somewhere, a robot gets a little more human.

✅ Sources

1.Deskribe.AI Official FAQ — www.deskribe.ai/faq

Written by the author, Fatima Al-Hajri 👩🏻‍💻2.Harvard AI Lab: “Training AI with Imagined Data,” 2024 Study

3.Dr. Erin Zhang, Cognitive Scientist — Interview on Imaginative Thinking and AI Models

4.“Prompt Engineering as the Next Digital Job Market,” Wired Magazine, 2025

5.Beta Tester Forums — Deskribe AI Subreddit, r/InvisibleArtPay

6.GPT & Human-Created Hybrid Art Exhibitions — MoCA VR Show, 2024

7.Terms & Conditions of Deskribe.AI, last updated July 2025