AI art generators, also known as AI picture generators or text to image generators, are programs that use the power of artificial intelligence to generate images and visuals from text prompts. And like AI video generators, these AI art generators are simple and easy to use requiring no technical skills or expensive software to do the job.
Anyone can instantly generate a beautiful piece of art by simply typing a few key phrases. You can use AI art generators to turn your inner thoughts into photorealistic images in a fraction of the time which is really insane!
You will no longer have to worry about not being able to find the appropriate image for your work project using mainstream image search engines. Simply describe what you want and the AI art generators provide you with beautiful visual renditions of your prompts.
As is the case with any AI tool or chatbot, the key is to provide accurate and clear prompts, the more detailed your prompts are the better design results you get.
How to use AI art generators in education?
For us in education, AI art generators or text to image generators are invaluable assets that can be used in a wide range of ways. Students can use them to generate beautiful artwork to use in their assignments.
They can also use them in their storytelling projects. They can write stories and illustrate them with AI generated images and drawings.
Students can also use AI art generators to create AI illustrations and AI drawings to help them with their learning. Posters and illustrative graphics are also something students can easily create using AI art generators. Additionally, AI text to image tools can help students visualize their learning and boost their retention.
Other than education, AI generated art can be used in different contexts including in creating marketing campaigns and ads, creating background visuals for desktops and videos, creating greeting cards and postcards, designing posters and stickers, creating image references for 3D art, and many more.
Tips for using AI art generators
To make the best of AI art generators, you need to master the skill of prompting, that is, know how to structure and word your prompts. One way to create effective prompts is to use descriptive and expressive language.
When you write your prompts, make sure to use descriptive and qualitative adjectives. These words provide more details and content to your ideas thus allowing the AI bots to better understand your prompts and therefore provide more accurate design results.
“The better your text to image prompt is, the better the results of your designs and AI art will be.”
Writing accurate prompts is a skill that you can develop with time and practice. Almost all of these AI art generators offer pre-made prompts for guidance purposes. Read them to learn about the anatomy of a good prompt and how it is linguistically structured.
Another way to learn the skill of prompting is to browse through the galleries of AI generated images from other users and check the prompts they used to generate those images. Go through various images from different users to learn how they worded their prompts.
Limitations of AI generated artwork
Some caveats to keep in mind as you navigate these AI art generators: All of the AI technologies that are currently in the market from ChatGPT to these AI art generators are still evolving. In fact, they are still in their infancy.
As such, expect a few inaccuracies and irrelevance in their results. They can mess things up and have already done so on multiple occasions. Your discretion is always recommended.
Another important point especially related to this AI art generator is the problem of copyright. Are AI generated images copyright free? Do you hold the copyright of the images you generate? these and several other questions are still creating a lot of debate in the media. I have already covered the copyright implications of AI art in another post. Check it out to learn more.
For those of you in the U.S., the Office of Copyright has recently ruled that artwork generated through a machine is not protectable by copyright. However, given the rapid pace with which AI technologies are evolving, laws might change at any moment so you need to constantly check for new updates in this regard.
With those limitations in mind, here are some of what I believe are the best AI art generators out there, well at least for us in education.
Best AI Art Generators
Here are our picks for the best AI art generators:
1. Jasper AI
Jasper the popular AI writer offers this handy AI Art that allows you to easily convert text and images to beautiful art. Jasper offers tools such as mood, medium, inspiration, style, and keywords.
Compared with Deep AI and DALL-E 2, Jasper AI art generator lags way behind but it still can do a decent job, especially for us in education.
Jasper AI art generator is offered as an add-on that costs an extra $20 on top of the monthly subscription you pay for your Jasper subscription making it an expensive investment. To learn more about this tool, check out Jasper full review.
2. DALL-E 2
This is definitely one of the best art generators out there. It is created by OpenAI and since it was made open to the public in september 2022, DALL-E has become such a hit. As per its description, DALL-E 2 is “a new AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language”.
DALL-E 2 offers way more powerful features and capabilities and is way more sophisticated in the way it works. If you use the correct prompts you will be able to generate amazing images.
Among all the art generators in this list, DALL-E produces the most photorealistic images. Anyone can use DALL-E 2 to generate artwork, illustrations, and even design products. No technical knowledge is required.
Unlike the majority of AI art generators, DALL-E 2 allows you to take a picture and create various variations of it inspired by the original version. It also enables you to add realistic edits to existing images (e.g., you delete elements while taking shadows, reflections, and textures etc).
DALL-E 2 is great to use in your teaching. It employs sophisticated algorithms to prevent generating inappropriate content including violent, hateful, or adult images. DALL-E engineers have eliminated explicit content from the training data thus minimizing DALL-E 2 exposure to these concepts. DALL-E 2 also uses “advanced techniques to prevent photorealistic generations of real individuals’ faces, including those of public figures.”
How much does DALL-E 2 cost?
DALL-E 2 works with a system of credits. When you first sign up you get 50 credits to use in the first month, after that you get 15 free credits each month. You can always buy extra credits. For instance, $15 gets you 115 credits. Check out this resource to learn more about how DALL-E 2 credit system works.
3. Deep AI
Deep AI is an AI image generator that creates images from scratch using a text description. You can simply provide your text prompt and select a style from the selection. Some styles are free and others are reserved for premium users.
Examples of featured styles include Anime Portrait, Renaissance Painting, Fantasy World, 3D Objects, Surreal Graphics, Pop Art, Impressionism Painting, and many more.
You can either pay as you go ($5 per 100 images) or select the monthly payment plan which costs $4.99/month and allows you to generate 500 images per month; if you exceed it you will be charged at a rate of $5 per 500 images.
3. Bing Image Creator
Bing has recently included image generation technology into its search engine allowing users to easily generate images based on text prompts. “When in creative mode in chat, you can now ask Bing to create a brand new image for you, using only your words.
Just say ‘create me an image of’ or ‘draw me an image of’ and finish off with exactly what you’re looking for. Image Creator works best when you’re more descriptive, so get creative and add details like adjectives, locations, or even artistic styles such as ‘digital art’ and ‘photorealistic.’”
4. AI Image Generator, Fotor
Fotor has this handy AI image generator that converts words into images within seconds. Start with describing what you want and the AI image generator brings it to life. Fotor also offers an image to image AI generator allowing you to generate beautiful paintings, illustrations, and visuals from images you upload. If you don’t like the generated image you can always click to regenerate new images. Fotor AI art generator also supports creating multiple images at once.
Fotor requires that you sign up to use its services. Fotoro is freemium. It provides new registrants free credits to test the tool then they need to upgrade to one of its premium plans to unlock the full features.
5. NightCafe
NightCafe is another powerful AI art generator that supports both image to image and text to image generators. You can start by clicking on the create button and then selecting a creation method. There are five creation methods to choose from namely Stable, DALL-E 2, Coherent, Artistic, and Style Transfer.
Each method offers unique features. For instance, the Style Transfer method is great for converting uploaded photos to masterpieces while the Artistic method is especially great for creating beautiful images from text prompts. NightCafe also offers several interesting and unique features including multiple style images, bulk creation, bulk download, custom seeds, etc.
As for the price of NightCafe, you can use NightCafe Creator to generate unlimited base Stable Diffusion creations for free… “More powerful settings (for example, higher resolution) cost credits.”
5. Picsart
Picsart is a text-to-image AI generator that helps you generate beautiful images from text prompts. Here is how it works: open the Picsart photo editor and find AI Image Generator, type or paste your text prompt, and click on the Generate image button.
Choose the one and start customizing it the way you want. You can apply filters, and effects, add text, adjust colors, and more. Once completed, click on Export to download and share your AI-generated images.
Picsart offers both free and premium plans. The free plan comes with watermarks and limited photo and video editing tools. Picsart cold costs $5/month billed yearly and Picsart Team costs $7/month billed yearly.
6. Writesonic
Writersonic is also known for its AI writing services but it too has introduced an AI art generator called Photosonic. This is a web-based art generator that lets you generate artistic images from text prompts.
Photosonic provides you with features to “control the quality, diversity, and style of the generated images by adjusting the description and rerunning the model.” Besides generating beautiful AI artwork, you can also use Photosonic to enhance and modify existing images by adding text annotations and applying filters.
Photosonic is free to try with 10 image generation credits that you can use to create up to 20 stunning images from any text description.
If you want to unlock unlimited image generation and access more features and settings, you can upgrade to a premium subscription for a low monthly or annual fee or purchase pay-as-you-go credits.
7. CF Spark Art
CF Spark Art is a text-to-image tool that allows you to create beautiful and unique artwork. CF Spark offers a versatile AI image generator that enables you to easily convert your text prompts into stunning art designs with only a few clicks.
No graphic design knowledge is required. The process is simple and easy and here is how it works:
- Head over to CF Spark and launch the AI image generator.
- Type in your prompt. You can select from predefined prompts or copy prompts from existing creations.
- Select your preferred ratio and click on Ignite.
- The AI image generator will produce four variations of your prompt. Select the one that you like and click on publish to share it with others.
Based on your prompts, the process of generating AI images might take a few minutes but you can hasten it by getting a CF Spark subscription. You will get 1000 speed credits which will help you create AI art much faster.
8. Text to Image, Canva
Canva has recently introduced its own AI-based text to image tool that allows you to generate images using textual prompts. I have tried it multiple times and found it decent compared with the AI tools above.
Canva’s text to Image is now available as an add-on that you can add to your existing Canva account. Once added, you simply type in your prompts, select a style (e.g., photo, painting, drawing, 3D, pattern, etc), choose an aspect ratio (e.g., square, l; landscape, portrait), and click on Generate Image.
If you don’t like what you get you can click to regenerate another image from the same prompt or you can tweak your text prompts till you get what you want. Once generated, you can use the Canva design editor to edit your image the way you want or you can download and share it as it is.
When you download your generated AI art make sure your select transparent background in the download settings.
Canva offers both free and premium plans. The free plan is very limited and won’t allow you to access many of the professional designs and media in Canva’ s library.
Final thoughts
The world of AI art generators is booming, offering endless creative possibilities for educators, students, and creatives alike. From enhancing student projects to simplifying visual content creation, these tools make design work both accessible and customized. Yet, their relative infancy means they come with limitations such as occasional inaccuracies and the nebulous territory of copyright issues.
So while they’re a fantastic asset in educational settings for enriching storytelling, project development, and learning visualization, a discerning approach is advisable. Don’t skip the chance to dive in and experiment, but keep an eye on evolving norms and laws.
