Artificial intelligence (AI) image creation has seen exponential growth in recent years. What once seemed like the exclusive domain of technically skilled artists is now within reach of anyone thanks to accessible and powerful AI tools. Not only are AI tools transforming industries such as graphic design, advertising, and digital art, but they are also democratising creativity through intuitive interfaces and innovative capabilities.
1. DALL·E 2
DALL E 2, developed by OpenAI, has been one of the most exciting innovations in the field of AI for imaging. This system is capable of generating highly detailed images from text descriptions. The second version of DALL E significantly improved the capabilities of its predecessor, allowing for higher resolution and accuracy in the images created.
Main Features:
Generation from text: The user provides a description in natural language, and the AI generates an image that reflects that description.
High quality and detail: DALL·E 2 is capable of creating images that stand out for their precision and complexity.
Stylistic variety: You can generate images in a wide range of styles, from hyperrealism to abstract or surrealist art.
Use Cases:
Graphic Design: Tools like DALL·E 2 have become an invaluable resource for graphic designers looking for inspiration or unique visual material.
Advertising: Marketing agencies use DALL·E to create creative, visually appealing and personalized advertising campaigns.
Digital art: Digital artists have begun experimenting with these AIs to create works that combine human art with automatic generation.
Despite its potential, DALL·E 2 is not perfect. Interpreting ambiguous descriptions can lead to inaccurate results, and there are limits to the consistency of the generated images when a very high level of detailed control is required.
2. MidJourney
MidJourney is another popular tool for AI image creation, especially among art communities and designers. This platform is designed to generate art from textual descriptions and has been widely praised for its focus on conceptual art and creative design.
Main Features:
Concept Design: MidJourney excels at creating images that look like conceptual paintings, with a leaning towards surreal and dreamlike art.
User-friendly interface: It uses a Discord-based system, where users can interact with the AI through simple messages.
Unique Visual Styles: MidJourney often produces images that have a distinctive visual style, more oriented toward art than pure realism.
Use Cases:
Concept Art: MidJourney is particularly useful for concept artists looking to develop visual ideas for creative projects.
Film & Video Games: Production designers use MidJourney to generate concept sketches for films, TV shows, and video games.
Art Exhibitions: Some artists have begun using images generated with MidJourney in galleries and exhibitions.
Despite its artistic quality, MidJourney sometimes struggles with accuracy in complex details or in creating scenes that require a high level of realism. Its results also tend to have a very distinctive visual style, which can be both an advantage and a limitation depending on the intended use.
3. Stable Diffusion
Stable Diffusion is an open-source AI that has gained a lot of popularity for its ability to generate high-quality images from text. Unlike DALL·E or MidJourney, Stable Diffusion is available for developers and users to customize and fine-tune its algorithms, allowing for greater flexibility in its use.
Main Features:
Open Source: Its open source nature allows users to customize it to their needs, giving it an advantage over proprietary solutions.
High Resolution: Stable Diffusion can output images at higher resolutions, making it suitable for projects where detail is crucial.
Flexibility: AI can be trained on specific data sets to generate unique visual styles or adapt to the needs of a particular project.
Use Cases:
Research and Development: Stable Diffusion is widely used in research projects that require AI customization for image generation.
Content Generation: Popular with content creators and designers looking for more technical tools to generate specific or custom images.
Digital Art: The ability to fine-tune AI allows artists to experiment with different styles and techniques in their creations.
Being an open source tool, it requires more advanced technical knowledge for its full implementation. This can be a challenge for users without experience in programming or handling AI models. In addition, processing times can be longer depending on the available computational resources.
4. Runway ML
Runway ML is a platform that offers a number of AI-based tools for creating images, videos, and other multimedia content. While it is not exclusively for image creation, its ability to generate art through AI algorithms makes it stand out in this field. Additionally, Runway ML provides an intuitive interface and is geared toward creatives who do not necessarily have a technical background.
Main Features:
Integrated Platform: Runway ML not only generates images, but also enables the creation of videos, special effects and animations using AI.
User-friendly interface: It is designed so that users can create images without having to write code, making it accessible to people of different skill levels.
Collaborative capabilities: Ideal for creative teams looking to collaborate on multimedia projects.
Use Cases:
Video Production: Runway ML is a valuable tool for video editors and content creators who need to generate visual effects or motion graphics.
Media Art: Allows digital artists to explore the interaction between images, videos and other media using AI.
Education and experimentation: Many educational institutions have adopted Runway ML as a tool to teach the fundamentals of AI-assisted multimedia creation.
While extremely versatile, Runway ML isn’t the most specialized option for creating still images, as it’s geared toward broader multimedia projects. Those looking for tools solely for image generation might find limitations in terms of visual customization.
5. Deep Dream Generator
Deep Dream Generator is a platform that uses deep neural networks to transform existing images into surreal works of art. Through the use of algorithms based on convolutional networks, this tool is able to analyze an image and create modified versions that stand out for their unique, often "dream-like" visual style.
Main Features:
Image Transformation: Instead of generating images from scratch, Deep Dream takes an input image and applies transformations based on visual patterns identified by AI.
Surreal style: The resulting images have a surreal and psychedelic look, with repetitive patterns and unusual details.
Easy to use: Users can upload an image and select the style they want to apply, making the process very simple.
Use Cases:
Surreal Art: Deep Dream is especially useful for artists looking to create surreal or psychedelic visual pieces from photographs or illustrations.
Visual Experiments: Photographers and designers use Deep Dream to experiment with new ways of seeing and representing the world visually.
Artistic Transformation: This tool is widely used to convert ordinary images into works of art that seem inspired by dreams or hallucinations.
Due to its focus on modifying existing images, Deep Dream Generator isn't ideal for those looking to create entirely new images. Additionally, its surreal style may not be suitable for all visual projects, limiting its use to specific niches.
6. Artbreeder
Artbreeder is a collaborative platform that allows users to create and remix images using AI. Its focus is on mixing visual features to generate new variations from existing images, which is especially useful for creating unique portraits, landscapes, and characters.
Main Features:
Image Combination: Users can merge different images to generate new combinations and create original variations.
Ease of Use: Artbreeder provides a user-friendly interface where users simply adjust parameters and combine images without the need for advanced technical knowledge.
Variety of categories: Allows the generation of portraits, landscapes, characters and other types of images by mixing specific features selected by the user.
Use Cases:
Character Creation: Artbreeder is widely used by game designers, writers and content creators to generate unique characters by combining facial and aesthetic features from different sources.
Landscape Design: AI is also capable of generating realistic or fantastical landscapes, making it a useful tool for concept artists and environment designers.
Portraits and Digital Art: Artists can use Artbreeder to generate unique portraits, blending different facial features to create detailed visual representations.
While excellent for blending and creating images from existing bases, Artbreeder is limited in its scope when it comes to creating completely new images from scratch. The reliance on input images means that full creative control can be difficult to achieve without extensive experimentation with the available options.
7. DeepArt.io
DeepArt.io is another AI-based platform that specializes in image transformation using artistic styles inspired by great art masters. This AI takes an input image and transforms it into the style of a famous artist, such as Van Gogh, Picasso, or Monet, providing visually stunning and artistically refined results.
Main Features:
Artistic Style Transformation: The platform allows users to upload an image and apply a specific style inspired by classical or modern artwork.
Simple Interface: The process is very simple, it only requires users to upload an image and select the style they want to apply.
Processing Speed: DeepArt.io is fast at generating transformed images, making the process accessible even to casual users.
Use Cases:
Art Creation: Users can transform personal photos or landscapes into works of art inspired by the styles of famous painters.
Graphic Design: Designers use this platform to convert common images into artistic representations that can be used in advertising campaigns or digital content.
Educational Projects: Art schools and educators use DeepArt.io to teach about different art styles and how they can be applied in the digital world.
Like other platforms that transform existing images, DeepArt.io relies on the quality of the original image to generate optimal results. Additionally, creative flexibility is limited to predefined styles, so it doesn't allow for as much customization as other AI tools.
8. NVIDIA GauGAN
NVIDIA GauGAN is a revolutionary imaging tool that uses generative adversarial networks (GANs) to transform simple sketches into realistic, detailed images. With a simple line or a blob of color, GauGAN can generate entire landscapes, including mountains, rivers, trees, and skies.
Main Features:
Transforming sketches into realistic images: Users can create detailed landscapes from very basic sketches.
Landscape Generation: GauGAN is especially good at creating realistic landscapes, based on user input.
Advanced Use of GAN Networks: Uses advanced neural networks to generate images that look almost like real photographs, even from simple sketches.
Use Cases:
Conceptual Design: Designers use GauGAN to generate rapid conceptual landscapes that can serve as the basis for more detailed projects.
Architecture and urban planning: Architects and urban planners use this tool to quickly visualize environments from preliminary sketches.
AI Education: GauGAN is also used in education to teach how GAN networks work and how they can be applied in visual creation.
Limitations:
Despite its amazing ability to transform sketches into realistic images, GauGAN is limited in terms of flexibility. It is only really suited to creating landscapes and is not as versatile for other types of images, such as portraits or more abstract compositions.
9. Photor
Fotor is an online platform that offers various image editing tools, including an AI-powered feature that allows you to generate digital art from text or images. While not as advanced as DALL·E or MidJourney in terms of completely new generation, Fotor is ideal for those looking for an editing tool with AI-assisted capabilities.
Main Features:
AI-assisted photo editing: Fotor combines traditional editing with AI-assisted generation to create refined images from photos or text.
Artistic Filters: Allows users to apply various filters and artistic styles to existing images.
Accessible interface: It is designed to be used by beginners and people without advanced technical experience.
Use Cases:
Image editing: Fotor is ideal for those looking for a quick and easy tool to edit photos and add creative visual effects.
Digital Content Creation: Content creators and bloggers use Fotor to generate engaging images for social media and websites.
Graphic Design: Designers who need to make quick edits to their images find Fotor an easy-to-use solution.
While Fotor offers AI-powered features, it is not a dedicated image generation tool like DALL E or MidJourney. This makes it more suited to editing and modifying existing images than creating completely new ones.
10. PaintsChainer
PaintsChainer is an AI specialized in creating images from sketches. Unlike NVIDIA GauGAN, which focuses on landscapes, PaintsChainer is a tool more oriented towards digital art and character creation. Users can upload sketches and the AI takes care of coloring them, offering different styles and color palettes.
Main Features:
Auto Coloring: PaintsChainer takes a black and white sketch and automatically applies color, providing multiple styles and palette options.
Easy to use: No advanced art knowledge or design software is required, making it accessible to beginners and professionals alike.
Variety of styles: It offers various coloring styles, from a softer and more realistic finish to a more artistic and stylized one.
Use Cases:
Character Creation: Artists working on comics, anime, or video game projects use PaintsChainer to quickly color character sketches.
Rapid Prototyping: Character designers and concept artists use PaintsChainer to quickly test different color palettes and art styles.
Art Education: This is a popular tool among digital art students who are learning about color theory and digital painting.
Being focused on sketch coloring, PaintsChainer is not suitable for generating images from scratch. Also, while the results can be impressive, the AI does not always correctly interpret the details of the sketches, which may require manual adjustments later.