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The New Era of "Vibe" Coding and Marketing
A major opportunity and a turning point in software
Roberto Nickson
April 10, 2025
Welcome back to The Signal, a weekly letter where I share stories, trends, strategies and insights to help you level up as a creator and win on the internet.
Today’s topics:
AI Coding is a new wave
ChatGPT-4o’s imagegen shook up an entire industry
“Vibe” Coding is the next wave.
This is something I really want you to pay attention to.
The way we build products on the internet is changing at dramatic speeds.
So much so, that Jensen Huang said 100% of engineers at Nvidia will be AI-assisted by the end of the year.
Tobi Lütke just put out a memo basically saying the same thing, but extending it to every employee at Shopify, not just engineers. I made a video covering this.
A recent report by Anthropic indicates software engineers have assigned more tasks to AI at a much higher percentage than any other profession.
AI is such an integral part of the coding process now that it is impossible to compete without it. Cursor, Windsurf and Replit are some of the fastest growing tech startups of all time. Copilot usage is off the charts.
And Google has just entered the chat with Firebase Studio!
But this new era has been extended to non-developers as well.
You can now build your own products with no coding or design experience.
Now, as someone with absolutely 0 expertise in design or code, it won’t be a cakewalk. You can build super simple apps and websites, but anything complex will require some serious studying and patience.
Either way, I implore you to study the landscape as there will be a serious arbitrage opportunity over the next few years before the tools improve dramatically and the mainstream really grasps what’s happening.
Here are my three recommendations to learn the basics of AI, for free:
Andrew’s startup, DeepLearning.AI also has some fantastic free vibe coding courses if you want to get started.
YouTube is also your ultimate resource.
The Biggest “Holy Sh*t!” moment since ChatGPT’s launch
The launch of native image generation in ChatGPT-4o was probably the first time since ChatGPT was first launched to the world in November 2022 where the internet had a collective “holy sh*t” moment.
Many of us understood that because of the rich fidelity and the way it understood and rendered text so well, the world of marketing would change overnight.
The process of creation will change dramatically over the next few years years. Natural, conversational language will drive the bulk of it, with human touch for refinement where needed.
If you want to understand why the GPT-4o imagegen is so good from an engineering standpoint, this video does a fantastic job explaining it.
Below are some examples of the capabilities of the new GPT 4o native image generator.
These will give you an idea of how the tech can be leveraged into your own marketing as a creator or entrepreneur.
Minimal 3D Icons & Illustrations
Shared by Nur Praditya on X.
Prompt: Minimalist 3D illustration of [object], soft shadows, smooth plastic textures, muted pastel colors like beige, gray, and olive green. Soft lighting. Isometric view with subtle perspective, cute and friendly style, modern digital render.
Create Photos & Videos of Real Products
YouTube Thumbnail Design
You can now one-shot YouTube thumbnails (and other graphics) by uploading a sketch of what you want with detailed instructions.
Making changes to the design is done through conversational language.
Here is the process I showed off in a recent video.
Here’s another example by Nick Gray:
Prompt:
Turn this sketch into a hyper realistic youtube thumbnail at 1920×1080 px resolution. The only text that should be there is the “STINKY” and an arrow pointing to the trash can. Everything else are instructions for details you should follow.
Turn Images into a Different Style
This is the one that set the internet on fire last week.
Christopher Bonnet shares 40 different unique artistic styles to transform your photos into.
The prompt is as simple as attaching an image and entering “turn this into X style”
Repurpose Any Logo or Graphic
Sirio shares how to copy a logo but include your own phrases or elements.
Prompt: Copy the original logo exactly—maintaining its style, pattern, color, depth, and aspect ratio. Replace the current text with: [Insert your custom phrase here], making sure everything remains fully visible and not cut off within the design.
Turn 2D into 3D
You can take any 2D object now and turn it into 3D.
As an example, let’s take a look at the 2D to 3D logo tutorial that Brett from Designjoy uploaded.
Start with a logo and a texture. This site has great textures to pull from.
Attach the images and use the following prompt:
Apply the texture in the left image to the logo on the right image and make it look 3d. Rendered in cinema4d, 8k. Keep the plain black background behind the logo.
Here is the result:
We can take it one step further and run it through Kling.
I used this simple prompt: a hand grabbing the 3d object
Create comic page summaries of any topic.
Courtsey of Umesh.
Turn a Simple Prompt into a Rich, Multi-Scene Film
This section is sponsored by InVideo.
I only work with sponsors that I already use, love and trust.
I love InVideo because it allows you to create an entire video, in any aspect ratio, for any platform – from a simple prompt.
It’s perfect for:
explainer videos
animated videos
faceless short videos
listicle shorts
TikTok shop videos
presenting a brand story
The list goes on.
Things I’m Loving Lately
This section includes products, services, creators and more that I'm loving lately. Everything below is organic and non-sponsored unless indicated.
‣ I have to shout out Sirio (featured above), he has been doing a fantastic job covering the AI landscape, and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with vibe marketing.
‣ I played this game called Schedule I on Steam, because I couldn’t believe it was created by a solo developer. It’s a lot of fun. I think in the next few months, we see games like this completely created by a solo developer with AI.
Quick Hits
This section includes things I have found interesting and helpful this week.
‣ Michael wrote a fascinating thread about why we make the choices we do.
‣ Min curated a thread with some powerful examples of Google’s new Firebase Studio launch.
‣ A team of researchers from OpenAI and Harvard just released an essay predicting the impact of superhuman AI over the next decade. It reads like a sci-fi, but it is worth nothing that one of the authors, Daniel Kokotajlo, penned a similar essay in 2021, and it’s eerie how close he got.
