The world of art and creativity is undergoing a seismic shift thanks to the rise of artificial intelligence. AI art generator tools are empowering artists, designers, and everyday creators to bring their wildest ideas to life with the power of machine learning.
Whether you‘re a professional looking to speed up your workflow, a hobbyist eager to explore new creative frontiers, or a complete newcomer to the world of digital art, AI generators offer something for everyone. In this ultimate guide, we‘ll introduce you to the 12 best AI art generator tools of 2023, highlighting their unique features, pricing, and ideal use cases.
But first, let‘s dive into what exactly AI art generators are and why they‘re revolutionizing the creative landscape.
What Are AI Art Generator Tools?
AI art generator tools are software applications that leverage the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to create or assist in the creation of artistic visuals. These tools take in text prompts, existing images, or other inputs and use them to generate entirely new pieces of art in a matter of seconds.
Under the hood, most AI art generators use a type of AI system called a generative adversarial network (GAN). GANs consist of two neural networks – a generator and a discriminator – that are trained on massive datasets of existing art. The generator learns to create new images that mimic the style and content of the training data, while the discriminator tries to spot the difference between real and generated art. Through many cycles of generation and discrimination, the GAN gets better and better at creating highly realistic and diverse art.
The incredible results speak for themselves. With a well-trained AI art model, it‘s now possible for anyone to generate professional-quality illustrations, paintings, character designs, and more, simply by describing what they want to see. AI is putting the power of artistic creation into the hands of the masses.
The Game-Changing Benefits of AI Art Generators
So why should you care about AI art generators? Here are three key benefits they offer to creatives and non-creatives alike:
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Unrivaled speed and efficiency
Imagine being able to generate multiple variations of a design concept in the time it would normally take to sketch out a single draft. AI art generators make this possible by outputting art in mere seconds, allowing you to rapidly prototype ideas and iterate towards the perfect design. -
Endless inspiration and creative diversity
One of the most exciting things about AI art is its ability to come up with combinations of concepts that humans might never think to put together. By training on such vast and varied datasets, AI can generate art that is truly original and pushes the boundaries of creativity. It‘s the perfect tool for breaking out of creative ruts and exploring uncharted artistic territory. -
Consistency and precision at scale
For projects that require generating a large volume of visuals while maintaining a consistent style – such as game asset design or marketing content creation – AI offers unparalleled scalability. Rather than painstakingly creating each individual asset by hand, you can use AI to generate them in bulk while ensuring a cohesive look and feel. This frees up more time for higher-level creative direction and refinement.
Of course, AI art generators are not without their limitations and potential downsides. Questions of intellectual property rights, attribution, and the role of human creativity in an AI-augmented world are all important considerations as these tools continue to evolve.
But one thing is clear: AI is here to stay as a powerful tool in the modern creator‘s toolkit. With that in mind, let‘s take a closer look at the top 12 AI art generator tools you should know about in 2023.
The 12 Best AI Art Generator Tools of 2023
1. Midjourney
Midjourney is an AI art platform that lives entirely within Discord, the popular chat app for communities and gamers. To use it, you simply type a text prompt into a designated Discord channel, and Midjourney‘s bot will reply with a batch of AI-generated images matching your description.
Midjourney‘s AI is renowned for its ability to generate highly artistic and stylized images with a distinctly fantastical or surreal flair. It excels at creating vivid, eye-catching visuals with a painterly quality that looks straight out of a graphic novel or concept art portfolio.
The community aspect is a big part of Midjourney‘s appeal. In the official Discord server, you can see a constant stream of weird and wonderful AI art from other users, upvote your favorites, and even collaborate or riff on shared ideas. It‘s an endless source of inspiration and creative energy.
While Midjourney offers a limited free trial, you‘ll need to subscribe to one of its paid plans for full access, starting at $10/month for about 200 images. The $30/month standard plan is the most popular, offering unlimited image generation. Higher tiers add the ability to generate larger images, use a "relax" mode for more artistic freedom, and access upcoming beta features.
2. DALL-E 2
No list of the best AI art generators would be complete without mentioning DALL-E 2, the groundbreaking text-to-image tool from OpenAI. As the successor to the original DALL-E, which first captured the public‘s imagination in 2021, DALL-E 2 ups the ante with incredibly realistic and coherent images generated from even the most abstract or complex prompts.
One of DALL-E 2‘s standout features is a tool called Outpainting, which lets you extend an existing image beyond its original borders. This is perfect for creating expansive scenes, such as wide-angle landscapes or cityscapes, by iteratively growing the image and adding new details with each prompt.
DALL-E 2 also offers powerful image editing capabilities, allowing you to make targeted changes to specific objects or regions within an image. For example, you could upload a photo of your living room and ask DALL-E to "replace the sofa with a blue armchair" or "add a vase of sunflowers on the coffee table". This makes it a versatile tool for both generating original art and augmenting existing visuals.
Pricing for DALL-E 2 is based on a credit system, with different tasks consuming a certain number of credits. You can buy credits in $15 increments for 115 credits, which works out to around $0.13 per credit. One text prompt typically generates four images and costs one credit.
3. Jasper Art
Jasper Art is the latest addition to the popular AI writing tool Jasper, bringing the same automation and efficiency to visual content creation. With a focus on marketing and branding use cases, Jasper Art is designed to help businesses quickly generate on-brand visuals for social media, ads, blog posts, and more.
Like most AI art tools, Jasper Art works by taking in a text prompt and using it to guide the image generation process. However, it sets itself apart with a handy template system that provides pre-written prompts for common business use cases, such as product photos, event posters, and infographics. This makes it easy to jumpstart your creativity and ensures the resulting art is tailored to your specific needs.
Jasper Art also offers a unique "Brand" feature that lets you define key attributes of your brand‘s visual identity, such as color palette, font style, and overall aesthetic. This information is then used to guide the AI‘s output, ensuring all generated art is consistent with your brand guidelines.
Pricing for Jasper Art is bundled with the core Jasper writing tool, starting at $49/month for the Starter plan which includes 50 AI image credits. The most popular Boss Mode plan at $99/month includes 200 image credits and adds access to Jasper‘s long-form content generation and command features.
It‘s worth noting that Jasper Art is a relatively new addition to the AI art generator landscape, and its image quality and consistency may not yet match that of more established tools like Midjourney or DALL-E 2. However, its tight integration with Jasper‘s AI writing capabilities makes it a compelling choice for marketers and business owners looking to streamline their content creation workflow.
4. Stable Diffusion
Stable Diffusion is a powerful open-source AI art model that has quickly become one of the most popular and widely-used generators in the creative community. Developed by Stability AI, Stable Diffusion is known for its versatility and high-quality output across a wide range of styles and subjects.
Perhaps the most unique aspect of Stable Diffusion is its open-source nature. Unlike proprietary tools like DALL-E or Midjourney, the code and model weights for Stable Diffusion are freely available for anyone to use, modify, and build upon. This has led to an explosion of derivative projects and custom forks of the model, each tailored to specific use cases or artistic styles.
One of the most popular implementations of Stable Diffusion is the DreamStudio web app, which provides a user-friendly interface for generating art from text prompts. DreamStudio offers a limited free trial, after which pricing starts at $10/month for 1000 credits.
However, the open-source nature of Stable Diffusion means there are many other ways to access and use the model, from self-hosted web apps to local installations on your own hardware. This flexibility and accessibility has made Stable Diffusion a go-to choice for artists, researchers, and developers alike.
5. Artbreeder
Artbreeder takes a slightly different approach to AI art generation than most other tools on this list. Rather than generating images from scratch based on text prompts, Artbreeder focuses on allowing users to "breed" and evolve existing images into new variations and styles.
The process starts with a large library of pre-generated images organized into categories like portraits, landscapes, anime, and more. Users can select one or more of these "parent" images and then apply various mutations and transformations to create "child" images that blend and recombine elements of the parents.
Artbreeder‘s interface offers a wide range of controls for fine-tuning these transformations, from basic parameters like color and contrast to more advanced settings for adjusting facial features, artistic style, and more. This allows for a high degree of creative control and serendipitous discovery as you explore the vast space of possible variations.
One of Artbreeder‘s most powerful features is the ability to "crossbreed" images from different categories to create entirely new hybrids. For example, you could combine a portrait with a landscape to create a surreal "face in the clouds" effect, or blend an anime character with a real-world photo for a unique stylized look.
Artbreeder offers a generous free tier that allows for unlimited image breeding and downloading. Paid plans starting at $8/month offer additional features like higher-resolution output, priority processing, and access to a larger library of images.
While Artbreeder may not be the best choice for generating art from scratch, it excels as a tool for remix and variation. Its intuitive interface and extensive creative controls make it a great option for both beginners and experienced artists looking to explore new visual styles and combinations.
Choosing the Right AI Art Generator for You
With so many incredible AI art generators to choose from, it can be tough to know where to start. Here are a few key factors to consider when selecting the best tool for your needs:
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Intended use case
Are you looking to create polished visuals for professional use, or just explore and experiment with AI for fun? Tools like DALL-E and Jasper Art are geared towards more practical and commercial applications, while platforms like Artbreeder and Midjourney are great for open-ended creative play. -
Preferred input method
Do you prefer to generate art from text prompts, or start with existing images and manipulate them into new variations? Text-to-image tools like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion are ideal for the former, while image-to-image tools like Artbreeder excel at the latter. -
Budget and pricing model
The cost of using AI art tools can vary widely, from completely free and open-source options like Stable Diffusion to premium enterprise platforms that can run into the hundreds or thousands of dollars per month. Consider your expected usage and choose a pricing model that aligns with your budget, whether that‘s a flat monthly fee, a credit-based system, or a more flexible pay-as-you-go option. -
Community and collaboration features
If you‘re looking to connect with other creators and draw inspiration from a vibrant artist community, tools like Midjourney and Artbreeder offer built-in social features and public galleries where you can view and engage with other users‘ creations. If you prefer a more solo workflow, standalone tools like DALL-E or DreamStudio may be a better fit.
Ultimately, the best way to find your ideal AI art generator is to dive in and start experimenting. Most tools offer free trials or limited free tiers, so you can get a feel for their capabilities and interfaces before committing to a paid plan.
The Future of AI Art and Creativity
As AI continues to advance at a breakneck pace, the possibilities for computer-assisted creativity are only beginning to be explored. Already, we‘re seeing AI art generators being used for everything from concept art and character design to fashion and architectural visualization.
As these tools become more accessible and user-friendly, they have the potential to democratize the creative process and empower a whole new generation of artists and designers. At the same time, they raise important questions about the role of human creativity and the potential for AI to disrupt traditional art and media industries.
One thing is clear: AI is not a replacement for human artists, but rather a powerful tool that can augment and enhance their creative abilities. By offloading some of the more tedious or time-consuming aspects of the creative process, AI frees up human artists to focus on higher-level tasks like ideation, storytelling, and emotional expression.
As we move into an era of AI-augmented creativity, it will be crucial for artists and designers to embrace these new tools and learn to work alongside them. This will require a shift in mindset from one of scarcity and competition to one of abundance and collaboration – a recognition that there is room for both human and machine creativity to coexist and thrive.
Ultimately, the rise of AI art generators is not something to fear, but rather an exciting new frontier to explore. As these tools continue to evolve and mature, they will undoubtedly shape the future of art and creativity in ways we can scarcely imagine. The question is not whether AI will change the art world, but how we as creators and appreciators of art will choose to adapt and evolve alongside it.
