AI image generators like DALL-E 2 and Midjourney have suddenly come to mind. Many of these tools seem to be popping up all the time, but they aren’t always publicly available. Here are the ones you can use right now, today.
Midjourney
Midjourney strikes the perfect balance between ease of use and impressive results. All you need to use it is a Discord account. Your text inspiration is saved as a message in the channel, and you can see what others are creating. Midjourney offers some nice additional features like scaling and contrast.
MidJourney Beta is free for the first 25 activations. After that, you can choose from several full subscriptions starting at $10 per month.
Stable Diffusion
“Taco eating robot”
Jason Fitzpatrick / Stable Media
Stable Diffusion is an open source machine learning image. It can create images from text prompts like many other tools, as well as resize existing images and resize images. Stable Diffusion runs locally on your own computer. We have a guide for setting it up and getting it working.
The advantage of Stable Diffusion is that it is completely free and you have a lot of control because it works locally. However, you’ll want to make sure your computer meets the requirements.
If you can’t manage it on your system, you can also try the Stable Diffusion demo on the web. There are also other sites that accept Stable Diffusion online. The Stable Diffusion subreddit has a long list of places you can use it in your browser. You can watch a video demonstration of Stable Diffusion online – it’s like using Stable Diffusion but without waiting for any images to be created.
Crayion (DALL-E Small)
Crayion “The Taco-Eating Robot”
Joe Fedewa/Crayon
The DALL-E Mini exploded in popularity when the DALL-E 2 started appearing in the news. It was later renamed “Craiyon” to avoid confusion. Crayion is a web application, it is not as attractive as others. However, it is very easy to use without an account or anything else. Just add a text tool and leave it at that.
NightCafe
NightCafe “taco-eating robot”
Joe Fedewa / NightCafé
NightCafe is a web tool that creates images from text in a specific art style. For example, you can choose genres such as “oil painting”, “cubist”, “fantasy”, or “3D games”. NightCafe also includes the ability to make videos, and it has a beautiful community around it. You are not limited to five free creations per day, and the process may be slow due to high traffic. To generate more than that, you’ll need to purchase additional credit packages that start at $7.99.
Dream by Wombo
Dream “taco-eating robot”
Joe Fedewa / Dream
Dream from Wombo is a similar implementation of NightCafe. Text inspiration is associated with art styles, such as “polygon”, “realistic”, “meme”, and “line art”. However, you have the option to choose “no style” if you wish. Dream is available on the web, but there is also a mobile version. Dreaming is completely free and endless every day.
DALL-E 2
DALL-E 2 “The Taco-Eating Robot”
Zachary Wander / DALL-E 2
DALL-E 2 may be the AI image generator you’ve heard of before. Many consider it to be the best of these tools, although the competition is catching up fast. DALL-E 2 has an easy-to-use interface to expand your creativity.
It is not available to the public for a while, but from September 2022 anyone can register without a waiting list. Each user gets 50 free credits for the first month, then 15 per month thereafter. You can buy more credits. As you can see, some of these AI image generators are more accessible than others. There are many such tools, others will appear soon. If you’re just looking to test the waters and have some fun, these options will get you started.
