If you’re a marketer, you know that nothing beats stunning visuals when it comes to grabbing a potential customer's attention, whether it’s on social media, via digital ads, or through your website.
And thanks to the prevalence of artificial intelligence (AI) art generators today, creating those stunning images isn’t just the stuff of science fiction, it’s more accessible than ever! While in previous years, it took an artist or designer to get the visuals you need, now all it takes is a concept, a properly worded text prompt, and a few minutes of your time!
But, with all of the choices out there, which AI art generator is the one that works best for your goals, your workflow, and your budget?
If you aren't quite sure, today’s blog is going to help you find out! Whether you’re looking to boost your social media presence, create custom artwork for your website, or just streamline your creative team’s design process, there’s a tool out there for you!
Keep reading for our pick of the best tools for generating high-quality artificial intelligence images and getting your brand the visual boost you need to command attention and leave your audience wanting more.
What are AI Art Generators?
AI art generators are software or platforms that use artificial intelligence technology (most notably, machine learning algorithms) to create images in any style.
These tools usually produce their artwork or complete specific tasks based on written prompts provided by the user or other reference guides like photos, sketches, or other uploaded images.
How do AI Art Generators Work?
It’s a complicated process, but we’ll try to break it down:
Most AI art generators use deep learning models, usually one of the following:
- Generative Adversarial Networks (GANS) — GANS are made up of two neural networks, a generator and a discriminator, that work together to create realistic images. The generator creates the images while the discriminator evaluates them to help the generator improve over time.
- Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) — VAEs encode images into a compressed representation and then decode them back again, creating new images based on what it’s learned.
- Transformer models — Transformer models use transformer architectures to generate images from text prompts. These models are very effective at understanding and generating images from even the most complex text prompts.
Whatever model the AI generator uses, it's trained on a vast dataset of existing online images and training data to help it understand a wide range of styles, compositions, and elements of visual art to recognize patterns, styles, and features within the images.
This enables it to then later generate new images that mimic these characteristics once a user prompts it. Basically, you give an AI tool a prompt and it uses its huge library of existing images and natural language processing (NLP) power to “understand” your prompt and recreate what you’re asking for.
The Top 10 AI Art Generators
So, which AI art generators are best?
That depends on the images you want and the features that are most important to you! Whether it’s realistic photos you need, surreal, eye-catching artwork, or creative illustrations, there's an AI art generator below that will meet your needs!
Take a look at our list of 12 AI tools and find the one that suits you best!
1. Midjourney
Midjourney is an independent research lab that developed an AI art generator of the same name.
One of the most advanced AI image generators out there, Midjourney is a text-to-image tool designed to interpret your prompts and create detailed and stunningly realistic visuals. You can access Midjourney via its Discord channel (you’ll need a Discord account to sign up) and start generating art in as little as five minutes!
Pricing: Midjourney has four plans for you to choose from:
- Basic — $10/mo for 3.3 hours of use
- Standard — $30/mo for 15 hours of use
- Pro — $60/mo for 30 hours of use
- Mega — $115/mo for 60 hours of use
Each plan is also available at a slightly lower cost for those who choose to pay annually.
2. Dall-E 3
The newest iteration of OpenAI’s flagship AI art generator, DALL-E 3 is the highest quality art generator OpenAI has to offer.
It’s a little pricier than DALL-E 2 but promises higher quality and more accurate images than any of its predecessors. Like Midjourney, it is also a text-to-image generator that uses advanced machine learning to transform your written prompt and create detailed and visually stunning images.
DALL-E 3 rolled out in November of 2023, and you can access it by signing up for OpenAI’s services, which will also get you access to other tools like ChatGPT.
Pricing:
DALL-E 3 offers different pricing based on the resolution of the images you generate. Here’s a quick guide:
- Standard Quality (1024x1024) — $0.04 per image
- Standard Quality (1024x1792, 1792x1024) — $0.08 per image
- HD Quality (1024x1024) — $0.08 per image
- HD Quality (1024x1792, 1792x1024) — $0.12 per image
To use DALL-E 3, you’ll need to purchase credits, which are fairly inexpensive. For instance, you can buy 115 credits for $15 and go to town generating images. And no worry about having to use them up as soon as possible. Your credits will be valid for 12 months from the date of purchase.
3. NightCafe Creator
NightCafe Creator is another very popular AI-powered art generator that is capable of creating stunning and unique artwork in just seconds.
It uses multiple AI algorithms to get the job done, including VQGAN+CLIP, Stab Diffusion, and DALL-E 2 to generate images from user’s text prompts. Users can also use this technology for style transfers, like converting photos into digital art.
And if you’re into the community aspect of AI creation, NightCafe offers fun features like AI art challenges and chat rooms for users to chat or collaborate.
Pricing: You can get started completely free! NightCafe offers free unlimited base Stable Diffusion images. These are low-resolution and have limited run-time, but if that meets your needs, then you’re all set.
If you want something more, then you also get an allotment of free credits a day that you can use to generate high-quality images. Additional credits can also be purchased if your needs aren’t met by the free ones. Visit NighCafe Creators’ website for more information.
4. getimg.ai
Getimg.ai is a text-to-image AI art generator that generates images right before your eyes in only seconds! Simply choose your resolution, the number of images you’d like to see (up to 4), the style you’re looking for, and watch it go.
It can also do other useful tasks like animate images, expand pictures beyond their borders, and train custom AI models.
To use getimg.ai, all you need to do is visit their website, click “Start Creating for Free,” and create an account using the email address of your choice!
Pricing: If you’re on a budget, this might be the AI tool for you. Getimg.ai gives you 100 image credits every month to create with (each image costs 1 credit).
If you need more than that, they also have 3 paid plans to choose from:
- Basic — $12/mo for 3,000 credits
- Starter — $29/mo for 12,000 credits
- Hobby — $49/mo for 24,000 credits
5. Artbreeder
Artbreeder is a collaborative AI-powered art generator that lets users create characters, art, and anything else their imagination can come up with.
It features neat tools like Mixer for mixing together images and text, Patterns for cool backgrounds and wallpaper, and Tuner, a tool to give users more fine-tuning control when refining their output.
Getting started is easy; just visit Artbreeder’s website and get started with the tool of your choice!
Pricing: Artbreeder offers 4 pricing plans:
- Free — 3 free credits a month (plus the opportunity to earn more by contributing to the community)
- Starter — $8.99/mo for 100 credits
- Advanced — $18.99/mo for 275 credits
- Champion — $38.99/mo for 700 credits
Each tier offers you additional features and can be made a bit cheaper by paying annually.
6. DeepAI
If you’re looking for a simple, easy-to-use AI art generator, then DeepAI could be what you’re looking for.
This straightforward tool creates images in seconds from a text prompt, with options for choosing your resolution, style, and the shape of your finished portrait. Just visit their website to get started with no sign-up required.
Pricing: Its output might not have the highest resolution, but DeepAI makes up for it by being totally free!
If you want a bit better quality for your images, they also have two “pay-as-you-go” plans to choose from, starting at 5 dollars each.
7. Artsmart.ai
Artsmart.ai is a user-friendly AI image generation platform that is designed to create high-quality art from just a simple text prompt. Using AI models like Stable Diffusion and GANS, Artsmart can handle image generation and other uses like image editing, upscaling, pose control for characters, and creating AI avatars for online profiles.
Get started by visiting Artsmart’s website and clicking “Get Instant Access.”
Pricing: Artsmart offers 3 monthly plans:
- Basic — $16/mo for 1,000 Playground credits (designed for small teams)
- Standard — $24.50/mo for 2,500 Playground credits (for larger teams and companies with bigger image needs)
- Advanced — $32.50/mo for 6,000 Playground credits (for organizations that need additional security and support)
If you want to make sure you’re going to be happy with Artsmart’s services, they also offer a 30-day trial! Try it out, risk-free, and see if it meets your needs.
8. MyEdit
This AI photo editor can be very useful if your team lacks a Photoshop expert!
Capable of complex editing techniques like background replacement, object removal and replacement, enhancing, and upscaling, MyEdit can simplify your workflow and give you the images you want in seconds.
And if image creation is more along the lines of what you’re looking for, it can do that as well, giving you the power to generate photo backgrounds, images, and turn simple sketches into masterpieces, all with a simple text prompt.
To get started, just visit MyEdit’s website and create an account!
Pricing: MyEdit can be used totally free! Simply create your account and enjoy 3 credits per day. If you need more than that, they also offer 2 paid plans:
- Image Plan — $4/mo for 300 credits (billed yearly)
- Image + Enhancer Plan — $7/mo for 500 credits (billed yearly)
9. DreamStudio
Developed by Stability AI, DreamStudio is an advanced AI image generation tool that uses its Stable Diffusion model to create high-quality images from simple text prompts.
It’s super easy to use as well. Simply visit their website, agree to their terms of use, and get started creating the images you need. You can also use it to enhance existing images. Just upload the images you would like to enhance, choose your style, settings, and the number of images you want to refine, and DreamStudio’s output will get you closer to what you’re looking for.
Pricing: Purchase credits as needed. It only costs about $1.18 for 100. Just keep in mind that costs are based on pixel size, not the number of images generated. The higher resolution your images are, the more credits they will use.
10. StarryAI
StarryAI is a user-friendly AI image generator that can create engaging visuals using only a text prompt, a reference image, or a sketch.
Getting started is simple; just visit the Starry AI website, create an account, and get started creating the images you want to create. StarryAI also offers useful tools like image enhancement, upscaling, background removal, and AI training to get it to give you exactly what you’re looking for!
Pricing: Totally free! StarryAI gives users the ability to generate up to 25 images daily.
If you need more than that, they also offer a Starter plan for $1.99/week (200 image generations), a Pro Unlimited plan (1000 image generations) for $7.99/week, or an Unlimited Pro Max plan (3,000 image generations) for $15.99/week.
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Need Another Resource for High-Quality and Professional-Looking Images?
While the above tools are wonderful for creating high-quality and realistic artificial intelligence images, we find that the best results are achieved by combining these amazing tools with an equally amazing graphic designer.
This is because, as advanced as generative AI tools have become, they’re still machines which are incapable of reading a room, understanding paint points, and knowing what it takes to resonate with a human audience.
It takes human designers with human brains and human intelligence to achieve all of that.
So, if your team is looking for the human designers you need to take your AI images to the next level and really give you the marketing collateral you need to succeed, then we have a suggestion to make.
Why not partner with Designity?
Designity is made up of the top 3% of all of the extremely talented and creative designers that apply each year, meaning our creative community consists of only the best of the best in their fields, using AI as the useful tool that it is.
And with the addition of a Creative Director, a project manager to be your single point of contact, manage your creative team, and make sure all of your deliverables are in your hands when you need them, you can meet your marketing goals sooner than you thought possible.
Why not take a look at our community profile to see how we’ve been able to elevate the visual identity of brands just like yours?
Whenever you’re ready, click here to book your demo call and get started with a two-week trial so you can test drive Designity’s services and see the difference its innovative model, talented designers, and up-to-date tools can make for the look of your brand.
Are you ready to elevate your brand’s visual identity?
