The fear of losing your job as a creative is real. Since prompt-based AI renderings have been flooding social media, it's hard to tell what really came from a professional creative's mind or was just thrown together by someone. Fact is, it is possible to generate artworks within a blink of an eye. With just a few additional photoshop skills, images can be clicked together in a matter of moments. Worst of all, it's all based on the hard work developed over years by specialists and professionals.
In this post, I've covered the essential AI platforms available to you to create digital artwork. To my mind, it's easy as a gimmick, but becomes increasingly difficult once you have a concrete concept or idea. I would argue that much of the current work flooding the internet is rather just playing around.
Stable Diffusion in 3D space
It takes a huge amount of experience to create compositions and effective 3D models. Obviously, the AI algorithms create their content from a jumbled database of artstation and other sources that contain hard-earned qualitative work.
After the first intermezzo with the stable diffusion methods, I was not really satisfied, because the results simply did not correspond to what I had originally hoped for visually. Even if I am convinced that my DALL-E poster is quite nice, I don't find the results super great. If I had more time to elaborate on this, I would definitely solve part of it with rigged characters and overpaint.
Comparison of the major AI creation-platforms
Midjourney - use "for free" but pay to own
Throws out the best results, but is really not that great when it comes to usage rights. You are welcome to create an account, but everything you generate for free does not belong to you, nor can you use it commercially.
We are a small self-funded team focused on design, human infrastructure, and AI. We have 11 full-time staff and an incredible set of advisors.midjourney.com/about
- If you are a paid member, you have the right to use the images commercially: "Subject to a selected paid plan, you own all assets you create with the Services".
- If you downgrade your account to Free, the images can only be used under Creative Commons 4.0 Non-Commercial (probably also for already created ones): "If you are not a Paid Member, Midjourney grants you a license to the Assets under the Creative Commons Noncommercial 4.0 Attribution International License".
- If you delete your account, you may no longer call the images yours.
- Midjourney grants itself the right to make your images available to users for remixes: "Please note: Midjourney is an open community which allows others to use and remix your images and prompts whenever they are posted in a public setting. By default, your images are publically viewable and remixable." Unless you activate the "privacy" option, which is included in the "Pro" plan (total $60/month, must be activated with /private anyway). Accessed by /private in bot chat or by /settings and then clicking on private.
DALL·E
DALL·E is just like Chat-GPT a platform of OpenAI. This means that the OpenAI pricing models, which can be fed by tokens. These tokens can then be purchased. The platform released by OpenAI in beta is simple, feature-rich and really impressively fast. I especially like the outpainting feature = "generate outer area".
You get 50 free credits your first month.15 free credits will replenish every month after that, on the same day of the month.For example, if you signed up on August 3rd, your free credits will refill on September 3rd.If you joined on the 29th, 30th, or 31st of every month, your free credits will refill on the 28th of every month.Free credits don’t roll over to the next month, so they expire a month after they were granted – but you’ll get 15 new free credits.
So, between the lines: 15 free prompts per month, then $15 for 115 prompts. With 50 prompts per day, you're out $200 per month - more on that on Reddit.
Overall, the OpenAi website is well structured, there are terms of use and precise and "easy" to understand rules that limit the use.
DreamStudio
The plattform DreamStudio developed by stability.ai includes various methods and AI-models that help with prompt-based generation using stable diffusion and stable inpainting.
Stability.ai’s goal is to develop terrific technology and share it with the world by making it as accessible as possible. One way we’re meeting this goal is through our API features. These features allow developers to seamlessly integrate state-of-the-art image generation into their projects without the need for a Machine Learning degree.Stability’s API Platform
AI platform prices, an expensive pleasure
No question, the results of e.g. Midjourney are simply badass and unbeaten. However, this is also due to the fact that the developed methods work very close to the referenced images with very well perfected . But it's best to keep an eye on the prices, which is only partly worth it. So be careful not to spend too much.
DALL·E 2
Take an image and create different variations of it. How it works.
- $15 for 115 credits
- 15 free credits every month (will replenish)
- 50 free credits your first month
Midjourney
Discordserver AI Prompt platform delivers unmatched results.
- Basic Plan $10/ month Billed monthly
- Standard Plan $30/ month Billed monthly
- Pro Plan $60/ month Billed monthlyGift Subscription
DreamStudio
Webapp using stable diffusion. Be sure to read the getting started guide.
- All new users get 100 free credits
- 1000 credits for $10
- 0.2 credits are used per image generation
The approach for this post is to continue to explore the experience design theme and the effectiveness of AI for that very purpose.
Compilation of some artwork where AI is used effectively
On ArtStation there are some very convincing results that have used AI in their workflow.
