Here’s How AI Art Generators Can Enhance Your Everyday Photos
Artificial intelligence has successfully made a space for itself in the art community and looks like it is here to stay. If you want to learn the latest tools and technologies of artificial intelligence, you can sign up for Caltech PGP in AI and Machine Learning or PGP in AI and Machine Learning by Purdue University. These courses will also expose you to various capstone projects to build your perfect portfolio and get hands-on training in AI and machine learning. If you want to generate images for commercial or personal use, then Shutterstock AI is a great option. Users can type the image description and select a style; Shutterstock AI will then generate the images.
The debate over AI’s role in art crosses commercial, cultural, and aesthetic issues that are sometimes hard to quantify. How much money do you need to save by using AI to make up for turning off viewers? How degraded is a show using AI art, and is the speed of completion worth it not looking as good as it could have with humans designing it? AI tools like DALL-E and MidJourney may have opened new doors for creators, but what’s fine for a marketing campaign or personal amusement is not always good enough for a project that seeks artistic integrity and commercial success. One of the biggest issues with AI image generators is that they typically train their generators on content scraped from the internet, which means the generators use aspects of creators‘ art without compensation.
The Copyright Office faced another work involving AI-generated content in 2023. Kristina Kashtanova’s graphic novel “Zarya of the Dawn” initially received copyright protection. Likewise, any software that promises to tell you how likely an image is to be AI-generated should be treated with skepticism.
It uses a generative adversarial network (GAN) to create a never-ending stream of unique portraits. It can give artists and designers an idea of how their work will change if they employ different styles or techniques, allowing them to experiment with new aesthetics and expand their skill sets. It will still be up to the artist or designer to put visual assets together in a way that’s personal to them, but by augmenting their skills in this way, artists will be able to work more quickly and make better use of their time. According to research by Goldman Sachs, generative AI has the potential to automate 26 percent of the tasks carried out by professional artists and designers.
This process is iterative, generating multiple images to refine and achieve the desired result. The highlighted lawsuit underscores the ongoing tension between AI’s innovative potential in art and individual artists’ rights. Plaintiffs in the case argued that AI tools were creating derivative works based on their styles without proper authorization or compensation. In contrast, the AI art companies defended their actions, asserting that the AI-generated images were transformative and original, thus not violating any laws. In a significant development in October 2023, a US judge dismissed most of these claims due to a lack of direct infringement evidence. This type of AI model is trained by teaching a neural network to predict random noise as it’s gradually added to images.
These images are made by AI generators, programs that use generative AI to take your simple text description and transform it into a batch of images that bring your artistic vision to life. AI image generators are great for brainstorming ideas, mocking up potential designs and creating personalized AI images. Even if you’re not the most artistic, these programs offer a lot of tools and features to help guide you along the creative process. AI art is controversial for several reasons—one of the primary concerns is the use of human-created art as training material for AI art models. This has raised concerns regarding copyright infringement, as artists may not agree to their work being used to train these algorithms. Another gray issue is the ownership of AI-generated art, as it is uncertain if the final output is owned by the AI tool, its developer, or the user.
Like DALL-E 3, Image Creator combines accuracy, speed, and cost-effectiveness and can generate high-quality images in seconds. It is also nice to be able to generate images without the safety guardrails that can sometimes be limiting for no reason. For example, if you ask other generators with strict guardrails to generate a person with descriptions similar to a celebrity’s appearance, sometimes you won’t get a result.
Trust and writing seem to go hand in hand, as a study conducted by NewsWorks found that 72 percent of the population prefer news and writing that were composed by human writers in 2024. A major part of the strike was voiceover artists not agreeing to their voices being recorded and replicated by AI without them getting compensated for their voice’s likeness. The early adoption of AI artwork was deemed to be inferior to real artwork with many describing AI work as still looking fake. Creative Bloq is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Nevertheless, that generic AI style looks cheap and lazy, especially when Netflix didn’t even both to correct the mistakes.
In our roundup of the biggest AI art controversies of 2024, we mentioned various brands that faced backlashes on social media because of their use of AI-generated imagery. And less than a week into 2025, the streaming giant has been caught out again. In many ways, Botto embodies a new vision for art, where the process of making art becomes just as important as the final piece. The rise of AI artists like Botto could signal the end of the “solitary” artist archetype, instead ushering in a future where collaboration between humans and machines shapes the very fabric of art. For centuries, the process of creating art has been viewed as an inherently human endeavour, driven by individual genius, emotional depth, and personal expression. Yet as AI algorithms like Botto gain prominence in the art market, the very concept of what art is — and who can create it — is evolving.
Or when it turned a stick figure sketch into a life-size stick figure, complete with a shadow on the ground beneath it. The Radical Print reframes the work of five artists who used the form to satirize and lampoon, actively dismantling power systems in the process. Before designing the certificate, Dakan, a creative writing professor, had already started to incorporate generative AI into some of his courses. If you have an Adobe account, you can use Adobe Firefly’s AI text-to-image generator for free in Adobe Express (with limited credits).
The EU’s approach is rights-focused, creating “opt-outs” for copyright owners to remove their works from text and data mining purposes. European legislators have ratified a significant new law demanding clarity on the use of all training data, regardless of its copyright situation. This move, part of the EU’s effort to shape worldwide trends via the “Brussels effect,” introduces a theme of digital autonomy into the regulatory framework. China has taken a state-driven approach and has shown that it favors the copyright protection of AI-created content.
Adobe has been a leader in developing tools for creative and working professionals for decades. As a result, it’s not surprising that its image generator is impressive. When it first launched, Midjourney’s biggest flaw was that it wasn’t very user-friendly. Since then, however, Midjourney has greatly simplified the process, launching a standalone webpage that makes it easy to get started. For step-by-step instructions, check out ZDNET’s guide, How to use Midjourney to generate amazing images and art.
He’s since become an expert on the products of generative AI models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google Gemini, and every other synthetic media tool. His experience runs the gamut of media, including print, digital, broadcast, and live events. Now, he’s continuing to tell the stories people want and need to hear about the rapidly evolving AI space and its impact on their lives.
„Even if it turns out no AI was used, it seems having them in the game would just continue causing grief,“ Simpson explained. So, the mere presence of some jankiness in an image does not mean it’s AI-generated. “AI has the disruptive potential of changing our economy, our political system, and our day-to-day lives. We must balance the immense potential of AI with the crucial need for ethical guidelines and protections,” Schiff said in a statement. Because of that lack of protections, we’ve banded together and advocated for ourselves in a way that has been very inspiring and very hopeful.
Should AI companies share profits with the creators whose works were used for training? These questions highlight the broader moral implications of AI’s reliance on copyrighted material. To make the best AI image, you’re going to want to build the right image prompt. As you’re writing what you want your generator to create, make sure you’re including the style, aesthetic, dimension and any specific elements you want to be included. Some generators have a hard time adhering to specific prompts, but it’s better to start with a specific prompt and refine or scale back as needed.
One of the leading tools is a free, online consumers service developed by Hive, a commercial company that builds AI models for content moderation and other industry-specific applications. It lets you create unique and original artwork using different inputs and styles, including abstract, impressionism, and expressionism. Generative AI by Getty Images tackles that issue by generating images with content solely from Getty Images‘ vast creative library, with full indemnification for commercial use. The generated images have Getty Images‘ standard royalty-free license, assuring you that the content is fair to use without fearing legal repercussions.
In essence, they are saying that art can be all inspiration and no perspiration—but these things cannot be easily separated. What I’m saying is that art requires making choices at every scale; the countless small-scale choices made during implementation are just as important to the final product as the few large-scale choices made during the conception. It is a mistake to equate “large-scale” with “important” when it comes to the choices made when creating art; the interrelationship between the large scale and the small scale is where the artistry lies. I think the same underlying principle applies to visual art, although it’s harder to quantify the choices that a painter might make.
The results could mean Procreate seems prescient or obstinate, but it will undeniably have a place in the story as a whole. Procreate has been a staple for digital artists since its launch in 2011, earning plaudits for its interface and Apple iPad-focused tools. Artists can create intricate, high-quality illustrations using touchscreens and styluses through Procreate, but that won’t ever extend to AI features. The Hive Moderation tool can help identify synthetic AI-generated content, even work that visually … Zhao and his team were originally focused on the problems of AI-based facial recognition systems, but shifted focus toward artists in 2022 when the first generative art tool like Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and Dall-E2 first appeared. Zhao says he joined a town hall on AI convened by Ortiz, where over 500 artists shared their concerns about the emerging technology.
AI tools can be treated as just another source for bringing ideas to the digital canvas, facilitating creation rather than supplanting it. Netflix pulling the poster off of the show is fitting, but Arcane isn’t unique in facing questions of AI art being used, with or without the permission of the creatives behind the show. Disney dealt with a similar issue when the Marvel show Secret Invasion used AI-generated art when displaying the credits for the show.
20 Best AI Art Generators and Image Generators – 2025.
Posted: Thu, 09 Jan 2025 08:00:00 GMT [source]
It pointed to the defense’s arguments that it’s impossible for billions of images “to be compressed into an active program,” like Stable Diffusion. One startup in the space, Swear, just released an app that watermarks photos and videos at the moment of creation to provide a baseline to identify any future modification, whether by traditional digital tools like Photoshop, or by AI. A good habit when using AI to generate images is to disclose that AI was involved in the process. Doing so helps build trust with your audience, as well as helps prevent misinformation from spreading. A disclosure can be as simple as something that reads, „Generated by [the name of the generator].“ You can fix a poorly generated image by readjusting your prompt to fix the element of the image you are having trouble with.
While individual pieces may contribute minimally, the sheer scale of usage complicates the argument for fair use. Fair use traditionally applies to specific, limited uses—not wholesale ingestion of copyrighted content on a global scale. As a digital artist and an early adopter of AI tools, I believe generative AI was likely part of the artist’s process, but the extensive human touch is equally evident.
Krea.ai offers attractive interfaces for third-party models, including Flux. When creating an AI imagination, it is not as simple as putting something in and getting something out. With each project, we start from scratch and it takes months to complete the data collection and training processes. Then, ironically, we teach the AI not to learn too much but to dream intentionally to create a unique imagination. We program it and, as the AI learns, it stores the information in 10 to 24 dimensions. The claim made by Anadol and machine learning at large is that the solution to our greatest material crises is information-gathering and knowledge-creation.
Using the dark-mode interface, Fotor AI also allows customization of the golden ratio, aperture, and other details. All generated art is saved in the gallery, and you can even download past artwork with details about the presets, prompts, aspect ratio, and others. If you want to see the best AI-generated art based on your prompt, try Fotor AI. One can choose various styles; some are free, and others are available only for PRO users. You can change the orientation of the generated image and even enhance it. It is the best AI generator that one can use if they want a resolution-independent vector image.
This challenges the traditional notion of art as a purely human endeavor and raises debates about authorship, originality, and the nature of creativity. I will talk more about this in the section „Perception vs Reality.“ For now, let’s first delve into the techniques behind some of the most popular Generative AI frameworks and models. Having some understanding of how these models work is essential to evaluate their strengths and limitations and identify potential biases or ethical concerns that may arise from the training data or algorithms used.
Because language comes so easily to us, it’s easy to forget that it lies on top of these other experiences of subjective feeling and of wanting to communicate that feeling. There is a context in which the dark spots are sufficient; birds are less likely to eat a butterfly that has them, and the butterfly doesn’t really care why it’s not being eaten, as long as it gets to live. But there is a big difference between a butterfly and a predator that poses a threat to a bird.
Most AI art generators create images using Generative Adversarial Networks, or GAN. Two neural networks, a generator and a discriminator, are used in GANs to create images that resemble the ones provided in the training/reference images. If you want to experience the best AI-generated art, Google’s DeepDream should be on your list. DeepDream uses convolution neural networks trained with billions of images to identify and enhance patterns within images through algorithmic pareidolia. As a result, the images take on a dream-like appearance that can be similar to a psychedelic experience. While Benjamin’s insights shed light on the cultural implications of technological advancements in art, John Maynard Keynes’s concept of technological unemployment offers a crucial economic perspective.
Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form. The tension between the politics of governance and the quest for objective, universally applicable standards presents a fundamental challenge for AI governance, highlighting the need for global cooperation and international standards. Acknowledging the political nature of governance standards is crucial, as is navigating them through trust-building and a rules-based order.
We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space. Ultimately, while they will embrace new technical skills and adapt to new workflows, the essence of their roles – to channel human perspectives, experiences and feelings into captivating works of art – will remain unchanged. They are also likely to need an understanding of the principles of AI ethics.
Benjamin was concerned about losing aura due to the mechanical reproduction of the work of art, but also recognized its democratizing potential. Generative platforms like DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and MidJourney take this democratization one step further, making artistic creation more accessible and fostering a sense of community and creativity. Allowing users to generate and share art potentially fulfills Benjamin’s social role in art. By trawling through the vast store of human production on the internet, AI systems have crystallized a unique form of collective knowledge. This machine form of intelligence, inaccessible in total to any individual artist or author, reflects, embodies, and amplifies the analytical intelligence that arises from our collective labor.
Similarly, artists are often seen as the sole creators and owners of their work, despite the many forms of labor involved in bringing their ideas to life and giving those ideas meaning. The most vehement criticisms of AI art revolve around two key, interrelated issues. First, critics contend that AI diminishes the creative process by replacing human imagination—which is inherently unpredictable and contextually rich—with a formulaic approach. In other words, the machine is doing all the meaningful work of art, and doing it wrong. Second, AI models are trained on ‘stolen’ artwork, which makes them fundamentally illegitimate. Essentially, AI art is cheating on the test and allows users to cheat too.
This artwork had previously won an art contest, but the Copyright Office’s decision was based on the lack of significant human intervention in its creation. This stance contrasts with the position of Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor and a renowned expert on Internet and law issues. Lessig advocates for the recognition of copyright in prompt-generated artworks, arguing that they are original and creative, embodying the human input of the prompter. He believes these works should be treated on par with other technologically aided art forms and that they have the potential to invigorate the art world by inspiring current artists and drawing in new audiences interested in AI’s artistic capabilities. But even if AI’s struggle with hands can be seen as a positive, the problem may not persist for much longer. In March 2023 Midjourney released an update to its program intended to make its hands more realistic.
As a filmmaker, Kit was at first skeptical about the usefulness of generative AI tools. However, she said she later became convinced after seeing what a friend was able to achieve with Midjourney. „I just personally don’t think we’ll ever not be interested in what actors and humans do,“ said Cameron Kit, founder and CEO of Yoyos, a documentary storytelling company. To help answer some of these questions, Khandaker has been performing play tests with other people, in which they have conversations to model what characters say or do in a game. 2024 was a relatively subdued year for AI image generation, at least when compared to the attention it gained in 2022 and 2023.
They know that if they can push opt out only, they can still have access to all that ill-gotten data. But if you do algorithmic disgorgement and implement opt in, then they have a problem because hardly anybody wants to give away their data. Then you have, again, a lot of students that are transitioning from student to professional and they rely on a lot of the smaller jobs as well. But those are the ones that are most likely using generative AI right now. Recently I was looking at like Global Game Jam, which is a world-renowned game jam that is usually a great start for artists.
These AI image generators are trained on a large volume of image data representing different styles and themes. This extensive training teaches them how to mimic numerous styles of art. Using this data, the AI can grasp and imitate styles that range from abstract to realistic, depending on the user’s preferences. Moreover, addressing the fairness of AI systems requires comprehensive regulatory guidelines that ensure AI systems balance innovation with regulation, thereby fostering an environment where AI promotes the public good. A concept of fairness, inspired by Rawlsian principles, can help guide a revised legal framework that addresses economic efficiencies and considers the broader societal impacts of AI-generated content. Rawls’ veil of ignorance encourages individuals to design rules without knowing their own position within that society.
