  We are witnessing a novel era of creativity where anyone can create digital
content via prompt-based learning (known as prompt engineering). This paper
investigates prompt engineering as a novel creative skill for creating AI art
with text-to-image generation. In three consecutive studies, we explore whether
crowdsourced participants can 1) discern prompt quality, 2) write prompts, and
3) refine prompts. We find that participants could evaluate prompt quality and
crafted descriptive prompts, but they lacked style-specific vocabulary
necessary for effective prompting. This is in line with our hypothesis that
prompt engineering is a new type of skill that is non-intuitive and must first
be acquired (e.g., through means of practice and learning) before it can be
used. Our studies deepen our understanding of prompt engineering and chart
future research directions. We conclude by envisioning four potential futures
for prompt engineering.
