paper 2025 ยท IJCAI 2025

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Prompts? Efficacy of Iterative Human-Driven Prompt Refinement in Image Regeneration Tasks

K. Trinh, S. Seidenberger, R. Wijewickrama, M. Jadliwala, A. Maiti

arXiv

Abstract

Evaluates the efficacy of iterative human-driven prompt refinement in AI image regeneration tasks. Through controlled experiments, we assess whether humans can effectively reverse-engineer prompts from generated images and iteratively improve them.

Key Results

  • Iterative refinement improves regeneration quality but with diminishing returns
  • Significant individual variation in prompt inference ability
  • Structured prompting strategies outperform ad-hoc approaches