If you were looking for an AI image generator at the beginning of 2022, the playing field was completely different. In the last few months, an amazing growth of AI art generators has occurred, essentially rewriting the entire scope of what you can do affordably with AI.
I am SO EXCITED to share with you what you can do with AI generated art in 2022, going into 2023. AI art generators have been moved from infancy to prime time. I'll share with you the best of the AI art generators out there, and even look at some of the text-to-image prompts that you can use.
Midjourney: The Best AI art generator at this time
I know. A lot of people love to list out all of the different text to image AI art generators out there without giving their true opinion of how to use them. I've been using Midjourney exclusively for a few months now, and I have to say, it's absolutely insane what you can do with this app.
First off, let's chat about the details. Because Midjourney isn't an AI art generator on its own website. Instead, Midjourney operates on the best chat server out there: Discord. When you sign up for Midjourney, they direct you to their Discord server, where you learn how to interact, via chat or DM, with the Midjourney Bot.
The text to image generator from Midjourney can handle all sorts of prompts, and even includes special tags (denoted by --) to help you customize the output. While a beginner might input "a bunny", someone who's used to Midjourney will use the text to image generator to create "a bunny in a shiny green suit, dressed as a leprechaun, holding a giant axe, photorealistic --testp --ar 3:2" or something like that.
I mean, let's be real. That's a prompt off the top of my head, and even that is child's play to some of the AI generated art coming out of Midjourney creators. How do I know? Because they do it publicly, in the Discord server! You don't have to guess at the prompts of AI generated art because you can literally see it.
Yes, the crowd atmosphere is what takes Midjourney over the top for me in a Text to Image AI Art Generator. Every other tool falls flat.
But just so I cover my bases, here are some others.
Jasper.AI's Art Tool
Weirdly enough, I logged onto Jasper.AI right when they were activating their new tool, and I got accidental access. I thought it was a free perk since so many of us pay them hundreds of dollars a month, but no - it was just an error. In any case, I got to generate about eighty images before I lost access to the tool. So here are my impressions.
Jasper's generator is fast, but I'm not sure that means that it's good. It produced Text to image AI art for me quickly, but the images were small and still had all of the same quirks that most gen 1 AI art has: extra eyes and toes, weird colors, and not being able to handle rare prompts (e.g., bearded dragon).
While it worked ok at generating images, the images weren't sale-ready for me. Not that the Midjourney example I shared above is sellable, but I didn't want to image mine or tweak the process. I wanted to show you exactly what the AI generated.
And the price. It's not the art generator price that bothers me. It's the whole, "I'm already paying them a buttload of money and now they want more" thing. I know - philosophical differences of opinion.
DALL-E 2
I was so excited for OpenAI's beta of DALL-E 2 to make it public. But I was honestly disappointed with the outputs I was getting. For the type of art I do, it was clear to me that you had to do a LOT of image generation to get exactly what you wanted. And DALL-E 2 operates on a credit system, whereas Midjourney allows you to generate images pretty much unlimited.
The credits system really put me off. I spent half of my credits trying to get a bearded dragon that I liked before I just gave up and went back to playing with Midjourney, because the art generated by Midjourney is beautiful.
Final thoughts
For me, the clear winner is Midjourney. I'm already selling my art generated by Midjourney, they have unlimited credits, and you're supporting an open beta community that is just super weird and cool. So head on over to Midjourney and check out my user profile, and go ahead and sign up for your own account.