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These free AI apps can take a sentence you type and turn it into a realistic painting or an image.
1. Nightcafe (Web): The Simplest Free Text-to-Image AI Converter
Nightcafe is the perfect example of these text-to-image apps to make your jaw drop by seeing the kind of mind-blowing creations AI can do. Type any simple English sentence, and Nightcafe will use AI to turn it into a painting.
When creating a new image, you can choose from various artistic styles like cubist, oil painting, matte, surreal, steampunk, etc. You can also add modifiers of artists, techniques, and cultural genres. Then you have to choose between two AI styles: Artistic and Coherent.
You can read about the tech jargon behind each on the website, but there’s a basic difference for the lay user. The Artistic variant is better for abstract creations like showing buildings in the sky or other imaginative sentences. The Coherent version is better for realistic images with your own customizations.
Select the aspect ratio, the output resolution, and a few other settings, and you’re good to go. Nightcafe will give you an original artwork based on your choices in a few minutes. All your creations are saved in your account.
When you create an account, you get five credits free, with five daily credits too. Credits determine the number of tweaks you can make in the settings of an artwork. You can also use an artwork as a base to refine it, which costs more credits. And yes, you can download your artwork for free in small resolution.
2. Starry AI (Web, Android, iOS): Text to Image AI Art With Granular Control
Starry AI turns text into AI artwork images like the other apps in this list. But unlike many others, it offers granular control over certain aspects that make the results a lot more personal.
You’ll start by entering a random phrase and choosing between two AI engines: Altair (produces dream-like images, more abstract) and Orion (produces “unreal reality,” often more cohesive). Then choose from 16 art styles, canvas size, or aspect ratio, and optionally add your own custom image to use as a base. Selecting a custom image is usually a good idea in these apps.
Starry AI lets you use extra credits to lengthen the AI’s runtime so that you get a better final image. Similarly, you can spend credits to tell the AI how closely to stick to your text. And finally, when the image is generated, you can spend credits to upscale the image to download high-resolution AI artworks.
Plus, you don’t always have to pay for these credits. Starry AI lets you earn free credits every day or week by watching ads or sharing your creations on different social media.
Download: Starry AI for Android | iOS (Free)
3. Dall-E Mini (Web): Get a Taste of the Famous OpenAI Dall-E
AI research lab OpenAI created the original and most popular version of an AI text-to-image generator, the Dall-E. Currently, the Dall-E 2 is wowing netizens with its ability to turn natural language into images, but it is in closed beta. You can join the waitlist and hopefully soon get to play with the online app.
Until then, you can use the Dall-E Mini, an open-source version of the original AI model available for public use. The machine learns descriptions by reading captions of other images on the internet and applies it to whatever phrase you type. You don’t need to register for an account to sign up, and you get unlimited tries for your images.
Type your sentence (and be as specific as possible) and hit Run. It’ll take some time, but Dall-E Mini will soon give you nine different images made from your sentence. You can save any or all images to your hard drive. Unlike other apps, there are no further enhancements or customizations in Dall-E Mini, but it is the simplest text-to-image AI generator and offers unlimited tries for free.
4. Dream by Wombo (Android, iOS): Simple, Free, Unlimited AI Text to Image Art Generator
Every AI-based text-to-image art generator is either paid, runs on a credit system, or has other restrictions. Dream by Wombo bucks all those limitations to let you create unlimited artworks from your text in many styles.
It’s as simple as creating an account, writing a sentence, and selecting a style. Current styles include, among others, Ghibli, Dali, Love, Robots, Psychic, Synthwave, Baroque, and Dark Fantasy. Let Wombo generate the image, and you can immediately ask it to develop another or download the one you liked.
You can use either the web app or the mobile app, but as our detailed Dream by Wombo review shows, the mobile version offers a few more features. Specifically, you can add a base image for the AI to use as a reference, which always helps in refining to get what you want.
Download: Dream by Wombo for Android | iOS (Free)
5. Pixray (Web): AI Text to Image Generator With Custom Codes for Geeks
Pixray is a text-to-art generator that you can run in a browser, on your computer, or with an API, all for free. It has a simple interface, but with its customizable AI engines and extensive documentation for custom codes, geeks will have a great time with it.
The default interface is simple. First, add your sentence as you normally would in any app. Then choose from the different AI render engines in the “drawer”: pixel generates pixel art, vqgan generates GAN-images (often trippy or realistic), and clipdraw/line_sketch generates stroke-based images as if it was a drawing and strokes were drawn down. This in itself will give you fantastic images, but the fun part is the last section, Settings.
In the extensive Pixray documentation, you’ll find that you can tweak the AI settings in several ways. For example, you can add artists or styles, define quality, iterations, or scale, and discover detailed ways to change your artwork through the drawer, display, filter, video, and image settings. It’s a bit of heavy reading, but no coding is involved.
6. DALL-E 2
Near the top of our list of 10 best AI art generators is DALL-E 2, which is an AI image generator developed by OpenAI. In just a few minutes, you can create highly realistic images with the AI.
DALL-E 2 is showing incredible potential. According to OpenAI, the tool can be used to create illustrations, design products, and generate new ideas for business.
DALL-E 2’s easy-to-use interface makes it possible for anyone to create high-quality images with AI. This means that not only professional artists will find value in DALL-E 2, but amateur artists can also use the tool.
One of the best tools offered by DALL-E 2 is its paintbrush, which enables you to add details like shadows, highlights, and more to your image. Tools like the paintbrush allow you to create complex images with multiple layers, each one customized with its own properties.
Here are some of the main features of DALL-E 2:
- Highly realistic images in minutes
- Create illustrations
- Design products
- Easy-to-use interface
- Customize multiple layers of image
7.Deep Dream Generator
Another one of the best AI art generators is Deep Dream Generator by Google. One of the most popular AI art generators on the market, Deep Dream is an online tool that enables you to create realistic images with AI.
Deep Dream relies on a neural network that was trained with millions of images. It is easy-to-use, only requiring you to upload an image before the tool generates a new image based on the original.
One of the main applications of Deep Dream is to use it to create artwork, since it uses different painting styles to generate images that appear to be from different places or periods of time.
The tool allows you to choose a category such as animals or landscapes before it creates a realistic image based on it. On top of all of this, Deep Dream allows you to choose three styles: Deep Style, Thin Style, or Deep Dream. After choosing a style, you can preview the image.
Here are some of the main features of Deep Dream:
- Creates realistic images with AI
- Neural network trained on millions of images
- Different painting styles
- Categories of images
- Three separate styles
8. Artbreeder
One of the most well-known names among AI art generators is Artbreeder, which is an image quality enhancer. The tool enables you to produce different variations of an image through the use of machine learning.
You can create landscapes, anime figures, portraits, and various other works of art on a single platform. Some of the other tools include the ability to change facial features like skin color, hair, and eyes. You can also turn photos into animated figures.
Another top feature of Artbreeder is that it offers thousands of illustrations and allows you to manage them in folders. The results can then be downloaded in JPG or PNG format.
Here are some of the main features of Artbreeder:
- Image quality enhancer
- Produce different variations of an image
- Landscapes, anime figures, portraits
- Mange illustrations in folders
- JPG and PNG formats
9. Big Sleep
One more AI image generator, Big Sleep creates realistic images from scratch. Like some of the other AI art generators, it is easy to use by anyone. It only takes a few steps to create one of the realistic images.
Big Sleep is based on Python, and it uses a neural network to carry out the image creation. After providing input data to the program, it outputs an image. It achieves this through a generative adversarial network (GAN).
With the GAN, the generator model creates the image while the discriminator model distinguishes between real and fake. This helps Big Sleep achieve highly realistic images over time.
Here are some of the main features of Big Sleep:
- Realistic images from scratch
- Easy-to-use
- Based on Python
- Utilizes GAN
10.DeepAI
Founded in 2016, DeepAI was created with the goal of democratizing AI through open-source software. It offers various tools that can be used to create realistic images.
DeepAI enables you to create as many images as you’d like, and each one is unique. It is highly customizable, allowing you to change the amount of detail, colors, textures, and more. If you type an illustration, DeepAI can immediately generate a resolution-independent vector image.
Some of the other tools offered by DeepAI include StyleGAN and BigGAN, which can also create realistic images. The CartoonGAN tool enables you to turn the images into cartoons.
Here are some of the main features of DeepAI:
- Open-source software
- Various tools for creating realistic images
- Change various details for each image
- Create cartoons with CartoonGAN
11. Fotor
Fotor is another one of the best AI tools for creating NFT art. It requires minimal effort, with the generator offering advanced AI tools to create art in minutes. It is also one of the most user-friendly tools for creating NFT art.
All you have to do is upload an image and select the style of art you want to apply to it. You can also create layers or add personal touches quickly and easily. The tool doesn’t require you to create an account to use the software or download the artworks.
Here are some of the main features of Fotor:
- Create NFT art quickly
- Easy-to-use
- Different styles and editing options
- Does Not require account registration
12. Runway ML
Runway ML allows you to generate images by training and using machine learning models. With the tool, you create models that generate realistic image styles in a variety of ways. On top of that, you can use Runway ML to create animations and 3D models.
If you want to create video projects, Runway ML includes a video editor tool that allows you to replace the background images of videos.
Some of the tools utilized by Runway ML include relative motion analysis, which allows it to analyze what you’re trying to do. It also has out-of-the-box object recognition, which helps you easily identify objects in images or videos.
Here are some of the main features of Runway ML:
- Collaborate on projects
- Generate realistic images
- Create animations and 3D models
- Video editor tool
- Relative motion analysis
So Is AI Killing Artists?
The different AI text-to-image generators in this article are all impressive in their own way. In fact, the most impressive are the two that we can’t access yet: Google’s Imagen and OpenAI’s Dall-E 2. But they’re not yet ready to take over from artists.
Just like AI writing tools, while the end product seems “real” enough like it was made by a human, it still misses some things. Artists can add creativity, emotion, and a self-defined style that makes an artwork personal and original. Maybe years later, AI could evolve to that too, but artist jobs are safe as of now.