Top generative AI tools for art and design

Image generators were among the first creative AI tools to capture the public imagination.

Since then, the market has matured rapidly, with AI image generators evolving from impressive technical curiosities to truly useful and powerful applications.

Today, many established, industry-standard art and design platforms have embraced this revolution by integrating creative functionality. Just about anything we can imagine can now be imagined, from stunning landscapes to intricate 3D models. However, their real value is not in replacing human creativity but in enhancing it.

My Favorite Generative AI Art and Design Tools

So, here's my review of what I think are the best tools that artists, illustrators, and designers can use to jumpstart their creative process or overcome challenges with a blank canvas. All have their pros and cons, and there's currently no one-size-fits-all solution, so if you want to understand how they can help you create more impressive images or streamline your design workflow How can help, so read on.

Dall-E

Dall-E is one of the most powerful and flexible generative image models available to the general public. It was developed by OpenAI, which also created ChatGPT, and the latest version – Dall-E 3, can be accessed by anyone with a ChatGPT Plus subscription.

This model is very good at interpreting and creating images with very detailed specifications and gives users a high degree of flexibility in how their finished images turn out. It can also create new variations of existing images and achieve results that are very close to photo-realism.

Dall-E uses OpenAI's language model, GPT-3, to process natural language input from its users and has also been integrated by Microsoft (a major OpenAI investor) into its Bing, Co-Pilot and Designer tools. What is it. It can also be accessed through its own API, available through the OpenAI Playground, meaning that developers can easily build image generation into their applications.

Stable diffusion

Stable diffusion was one of the first image models to gain public attention, demonstrating how powerful the latest generation of AI image generators have become. Developed by researchers at Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University in collaboration with US company Runway ML, it can create multiple iterations of images from a single prompt. It also has the ability to edit and enhance existing photos.

What really sets it apart from other models like the Midjourney and Dall-E, is that it's open source. This means that anyone can create a customized version to suit their needs and even run it natively on their own hardware. Because of this, it is widely used to create images used in movies, music videos and TV shows. However, its flexibility means that it may require a little more technical know-how to achieve the best results. If you don't want to set up your own server, Stable Diffusion can be accessed through web interfaces, including DreamStudio and Stable Diffusion Web.

The middle journey

Midgerni is an image generation model aimed more at artists than designers, and as a result its output can be highly evocative, detailed and imaginative, and often of outstanding quality.

Midjourney differs slightly from other models in that instead of accessing it through a web interface, app or API, users interact with it through Discord using the messaging platform's bot commands. It has been used to create illustrations and comics, as well as an image used as the cover of an issue of The Economist. It also sparked controversy when it was used to create the infamous poop in a puffer jacket deepfake image.

Partly due to access through Discord, a strong community has developed around Midjourney, and users often collaborate to create and share innovative tips and use cases. However, its outputs can be less photo-realistic and more stylized than some of the tools listed here, and it seems to be remembered for allowing itself a greater degree of artistic license in the way it gestures. Interprets – sometimes leads to more unexpected results.

Adobe Firefly

Firefly is part of Adobe's Creative Cloud suite of design and production tools, though it's usable in a more limited form without a subscription. It brings creativity to market-leading applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator and Adobe Express. Images and designs created in Firefly can be seamlessly integrated into professional design workflows.

An interesting element of Firefly is its commitment to transparent and ethical AI. To this end, Adobe has trained its models entirely on images that exist in its database of stock images as well as public domain content. The idea is to give creators peace of mind that they are protected from claims that their work infringes on the copyright of others. Adobe even goes so far as to indemnify its users against any such legal claims that may arise in the future.

Canva Magic Design

Canva is an extremely popular cloud-based design platform often used to create marketing materials, email templates and social media assets. Starting this year, it has added creative design functionality. Powered by a customizable version of Stable Diffusion, it allows users to create images and design features such as logos, graphics and templates. These can be automatically associated with elements such as color palettes and fonts to match your brand guidelines. It also uses Generative AI to make suggestions for adding Canva's extensive library of image and template assets to users' projects.

Overall, Canva's creative functionality is focused on offering a seamless and versatile experience around the creation of marketing content that can be accessed in both its free and paid services.

Other Great Generative AI Art and Design Tools

Art, design and graphics is one field that certainly has no shortage of amazing creative AI tools – here are the best of the rest.

Autodesk Fusion

This industry-standard design platform now provides creative tools aimed at improving users' skills and enhancing creativity.

Crayon

Craiyon is a free, user-friendly image generation tool perfect for creating quick, simple images.

Da Vinci

Create unique artwork from simple text prompts using multiple image generation models.

Freepik

Free, simple, no frills AI image generation from text prompts.

Getty Images AI

AI image generation from the Getty Image Repository powered by Nvidia technology.

Image

Imagen is an image generation model created by Google's Deep Brain AI team. It scores particularly well on benchmarks that measure how closely the image output aligns with the user's text input. It is accessible through Google's Gemini Pro chatbot in most regions, although it is not yet accessible in Europe.

Image FX

Another tool from Google that enables access to the Imagine model is designed to be user-friendly when it comes to quick, simple image generation.

on which

Initially launched as an AI authoring tool, Jasper now also has an image generation model available to users of its paid service.

Let's expand.

The tool has always been popular with designers for its ability to enhance and enhance existing images, and it now adds creative AI features.

Night Cafe

It is a community-based generative AI portal that allows users to access models, including Dall-E 2 and Stable Diffusion.

Shutterstock AI

The long-established stock image service now has a tool that enables users to create their own images if they can't find anything in the library that fits their needs.

Wombo Dream

This AI image generator is available as an iOS app through Apple's App Store and is perfect for creating dreamlike, realistic and whimsical images.