Is there anything artificial intelligence can't do? It seems like there's a mesmerizing new technological breakthrough every month. The trending breakthrough is how AI can now take a sentence you type and turn it into a painting or an image. And you can try it right now.
If you want to create AI art from text prompts, here are some of the best free AI art generators in 2023.
1. Nightcafe (Web): A Completely Free Text-to-Image AI Art Generator
Nightcafe is the perfect example of these text-to-image apps that will 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. You'll have to log in, which is completely free, to start using it.
When creating a new image, you can choose from various artistic styles, including cubist, oil painting, matte, surreal, steampunk, and more. You can also choose which algorithm and model to use, including the popular Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2, among others.
To use Nightcafe completely free of charge, choose Stable Diffusion 1.5 or Stable Diffusion 2.1 under Model, and generate 1 Image under the Number of Images. Other models and multiple image generation can cost credits that are deducted from the five free credits you get each month.
Nightcafe is a great free Midjourney alternative, which is one of the most popular AI art generators with paid subscriptions.
2. Starry AI (Web, Android, iOS): A Cross-Platform Text-to-Image AI Art Creator
Unlike many others on this list, Starry AI offers granular control over certain aspects that make the results a lot more personal.
You start by selecting the AI image type: Art, Photos, Illustrations, or Your Styles. For generating an image using any of these image types, enter your prompt, choose the Styles, Canvas Size, and Runtime, and optionally add your own Start Image to use as a base.
Once you've selected the required options, click on Generate, and Starry AI will do its magic. Each image you generate consumes one of the five free credits. However, you don't always have to pay for these credits, as it 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, in-app purchases available)
3. Craiyon (Web): Get a Taste of the Famous OpenAI DALL-E
AI research lab OpenAI created the original and most popular version of an AI art generator, DALL-E. Netizens are wowed by DALL-E 2's ability to turn natural language into images. If you don't want to sign up, you can use Craiyon (formerly DALL-E Mini), an open-source version of the original AI model available for public use. Its team members were part of the DALL-E Mini project.
The machine learns descriptions by reading captions of other images on the internet and applying them to whatever phrase you type. You don't need to register for an account, and you get unlimited tries for your images.
Type your prompt, choose the image type, enter the Negative words (things you don't want in your image), and hit Draw. Craiyon will give you nine different images made from your text. You can save any or all images to your hard drive.
Unlike other apps, there are no further enhancements or customizations in Craiyon.
4. Dream by Wombo (Web, Android, iOS): A Simple, Partially Free AI Text-to-Image Art Generator
With Dream by Wombo, you can start creating art by writing a prompt, selecting an Art Style, adding an Input Image (optional), and hitting Create. Current free styles include, among others, Ghibli, Unrealistic, Anime, Line-Art, and Surreal. 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. Both have almost a similar set of features on offer. You can refer to our Dream by Wombo guide to learn more about how to use the mobile app.
Download: Dream by Wombo for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
5. Pixray (Web): The Best Free AI Art Generator 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 prompt 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 and line_sketch generate stroke-based images as if they were real drawings with strokes.
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. DeepAI (Web): A Quick and Easy AI Text-to-Image Generator
DeepAI offers an easy-to-use text-to-image generator that produces decent results with the right prompts. There are many image styles on offer, and almost half of those are free. The free ones include basic text-to-image, cute creatures, fantasy worlds, cyberpunk, old, renaissance painting, and abstract, among a few others.
All of these styles produce images according to that theme, pretty much like the other tools on this list. However, among these styles, there is an AI logo generator as well that you can use to produce interesting logo ideas. It's particularly useful for artists who are looking for inspiration to build on or to overcome a block.
7. Bing Image Creator (Web): Microsoft's Take on AI Text-to-Image Generation Based on DALL-E
When Microsoft brought AI to Bing, it went into an agreement with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT and DALL-E. Soon after Bing Co-Pilot hit the scenes, Microsoft also added Bing Image Creator to the equation, providing a comprehensive AI suite in the process for free.
Bing Image Creator works pretty similarly to the other tools on this list—you just enter the prompt and hit Create to generate images. The results are decent, and you can produce more specific pieces of art by describing your images as comprehensively as possible.
The downside of Bing is that it requires you to use Microsoft Edge to work. However, you can ditch Edge and use Bing and its Image Creator in Chrome.
8. Picsart (Web, Android, iOS): A Free and Simple AI Art Generator
Picsart is a well-known smartphone app for designing and photo editing. It also offers an AI Image Generator that you can use with your free account.
Picsart's AI Image Generator has an interesting feature that can come in pretty handy. If you're having trouble constructing the right prompt, you can use its prompt presets instead. These presets give you a great starting point for building the right prompt, and you can Shuffle the prompt to create a new one or edit its minute details to get what you want.
Picsart has more amazing tools worth exploring other than this AI functionality.
Download: Picsart for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
9. Canva (Web, Android, iOS): A Free AI Image Generator by the Popular Design App
Canva is one of the most popular photo-editing and designing apps for the web and smartphones. Like Picsart, it has also plunged into the AI world with a free AI art generator simply called Text to Image.
Text to Image can also help you with prompts, but it doesn't have predefined presets like Picsart. Instead, you can click on Try an example to generate a random prompt and then click on Try another to generate another one. Other than that, you get a small bunch of Styles to choose from so that the generated image adheres to a certain theme.
Combining this tool with the other features it offers will help you get the most out of Canva.
Download: Canva for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
10. Dezgo (Web): A Powerful AI Art Generator Based on Stable Diffusion
Dezgo is another powerful AI image generator that might surprise you with its amazing results. It has similar capabilities to those of Nightcafe. However, its advanced options might seem a bit complicated at first.
In the free version of Dezgo, there are some limitations, like the number of images you can generate simultaneously and the ability to add more steps (details) or upscale the image.
If you don't want to delve into its advanced options, you can simply type in your prompt and choose the AI model you'd like to use to generate your image. Just hit Run and let Dezgo do its magic!
11. DreamStudio (Web): A Moderately Advanced AI Text-to-Image Generator
DreamStudio by Stability AI uses open-source Stable Diffusion models to produce some great-looking AI text-to-image art. But here's the catch: you get limited credits as a new user, and once you run out, you'll have to purchase more to continue.
Considering its decent feature set and the ability to generate some solid results, it's worth using the 25 free credits to test the app. The process of generating images is pretty similar to that of the other apps on this list: you enter a prompt, choose a style, enter negative words, upload an image, adjust the other options, and finally hit Dream.
12. getimg.ai (Web): A Versatile AI Art Generator With Lots of Models
This one is loaded with models and styles to choose from, making it a bit of an advanced tool. The web app tries to make things easier for you by dividing each model and style into categories like General/Art, Photorealism, Anime, and more. Other than that, the image generation process is pretty much the same as the others.
You get 100 free credits to play with each month. Each image, in general, costs one credit. If you generate four images simultaneously with one prompt, it'll cost you four credits.
So, Is AI Killing Artists?
The different AI text-to-image art generators in this article are all impressive in their own way. But just like AI writing tools, while the end product seems "real" enough, it still misses some things. Artists can add creativity, emotion, and a self-defined style that makes an artwork personal and original. However, AI is quickly on its way to doing the same.