The best AI image generator currently available

From Pope Francis in a down jacket to Wes Anderson-inspired movie trailers, artificial intelligence-generated images are becoming increasingly common on the internet. It’s not hard to see why – modern AI tools have become so convincing that their images have even won prestigious photography awards. You don't have to be a talented artist or photographer to create beautiful art, either. If you’ve ever used a chatbot like ChatGPT or Bing Chat, you’ll feel right at home using any of the best AI image generators.

To generate an AI image, all you need is a text prompt describing the scene in your mind. For example, I used the prompt "New York City skyline at golden hour with tall skyscrapers and busy streets" in one of the images below. However, your imagination can run wild as detailed tips spell out every intricate detail.

So, with these features in mind, here’s our list of the best AI image generators available right now. We will continue to update this list as technology continues to evolve.

The Best AI Image Generator

From free to paid, simple to complex, you will quickly learn that no two AI image generators work the same. In fact, almost all of them also differ in their underlying machine learning models. This means that the same prompt will give different results depending on which generator you use. To do this, you can choose from the following options:

• Midjourney
• DALL-E
• Stable Diffusion Online
• DreamStudio
• Bing Image Creator

Midjourney

Although Midjourney is not the first AI image generator, it has now become the first choice for many people. That's because Midjourney's latest V5 version already outshines most of its competitors. In some cases, the results it produces look realistic, although there are a few minor bugs that reveal its AI heritage.

Unlike most other services on this list, you can't access Midjourney through a website or app. Instead, you need to use Discord – a chat app commonly used by the gaming community. That’s not a bad thing, though, as Discord works on all major platforms, including web browsers. To get started, simply create an account and join the Midjourney Discord server. You may have to accept the terms of service before getting started, but that's the only barrier to entry.

Midjourney has become everyone's go-to image generator.

New members can only generate a limited number of free images (approximately 25) as part of the free trial. However, Midjourney disables free trials during heavy traffic periods. The cheapest way to use the service is a $10 per month subscription. You can save even more if you commit to a full year's subscription. Unfortunately, this tier still only gives you about 200 images per month.

While you can use Midjourney with basic prompts containing just a few words (or even emojis), its real power lies in its parameters. For example, you can use the --ar parameter to specify an aspect ratio of 16:9 or create an anime-style image using . --niji.

Launched in 2021, DALL-E became the first generative AI to break into the mainstream. The latest version, DALL-E 2, takes things to another level with better language understanding and higher quality images. It can also edit existing images, allowing you to replace or add entirely new objects.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, created DALL-E. The company explains how the image generator understands your prompts, based on its GPT-3 large-scale language model.

Using DALL-E is very simple and straightforward. You'll need an OpenAI account, which you probably already have if you've ever used ChatGPT. Once logged in, you can enter a prompt in the text box and click the Generate button.

DALL-E was the first AI image generator to gain traction, but it wasn't always the best choice.

Each image you generate will cost one point. Unfortunately, however, DALL-E no longer offers any way for new users to earn free credits. The practice ends in April 2023, so if you create an account today you'll need to purchase points. You have to load $15 each time, which will generate 115 points. It works out to about 13 cents per use, which isn’t bad for one of the best AI image generators out there.

Having said that, you can still use DALL-E for free through Microsoft’s Bing Chat. Scroll down to learn more about how to do this.

Stable Diffusion

Unlike other AI image generators on this list, Stable Diffusion is completely free and open source. If you have a powerful computer with a dedicated graphics card, you can even download and run the model yourself. Even better, it works completely offline. However, this isn’t an option for everyone, as the minimum requirements require a GPU with 8GB VRAM. This disqualifies most non-gaming or non-workstation computers.

Stable Diffusion is a free and open source machine learning model for image generation.

good news? You can use Stable Diffusion to generate images entirely within your web browser. Just visit the StableDiffusionOnline website and enter the prompts. It doesn't get any simpler than this.

You don't need an account, but your results will be saved and visible to others. For maximum privacy, you must run the model on your own computer. You also can't see your personal generational history, so it's for one-time use only. Having said that, the platform does allow you to browse past tips and their results. This comes in handy when you're lacking artistic inspiration.

DreamStudio

While StableDiffusionOnline from the previous section works well as a free service, its functionality is not complete yet. For example, you can't customize the size of the image or edit it after it's generated. But luckily, Stability AI, the creators of Stable Diffusion, have just the solution in the form of DreamStudio.

After you open DreamStudio, you will find that it looks like a beautiful application with many buttons and dials. You can generate multiple (or fewer) images at once, change the aspect ratio, omit certain elements from your AI-generated masterpiece, and more. DreamStudio also offers different "styles" covering everything from photorealism to origami and comic book looks.

From different styles to various editing features, DreamStudio offers a highly customizable experience.

In addition to this, you can also use the Edit tab to add and remove objects in the AI-generated image. For example, try using the eraser tool to delete parts of an image. Then enter the prompt to fill in the gaps.

DreamStudio, as an official and highly polished product, does cost money to use. But the good news is you get 25 free points when you sign up, which will get you 125 generations. On top of that, a minimum spend of $10 will get you 1,000 tokens or around 5,000 AI-generated images.

Bing Chat

Microsoft’s Bing search engine received a powerful new chat mode shortly after the launch of ChatGPT. Since then, it's gotten even more powerful as the company has also added a free AI image generator to the mix. The service, called Bing Image Creator, now has a dedicated page with ideas and instructions on how to use it.

With Microsoft working closely with ChatGPT creator OpenAI, it’s no surprise that Bing’s Image Creator uses DALL-E under the hood. This means that if you run out of free credits on one platform, you can simply switch to another.

Bing Chat's image generation uses DALL-E under the hood and doesn't cost a penny.

When you sign in with a Microsoft account, Image Creator automatically grants you 100 "boosts." These are essentially credits that allow you to generate new images almost instantly. Boosts automatically replenish each week and you cannot pay for more points at this time. What happens when you run out of boosters? As the name suggests, you will have to wait longer. But the good news is that you can still generate an unlimited number of images for free.

You can also access the image creator through vanilla Bing Chat, even on mobile devices. Just switch to creative mode and start the prompt using "Generate image of..." This method currently follows the same limit as the chatbot, 200 conversation threads per day.

That’s it for our list of the best AI image generators available right now. Have you used them? Let us know which one you'll be using in the contest in the poll below.

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