The Best Free AI Image Generators (Power Rankings)
Looking for free AI image generators to help you create incredible images? Well, look no further. We’ve put together a power ranking of the best free AI image generators on the web so you can stop pouring over Reddit posts and singing up for free trials. Our creative teams leverage AI tools all the time to help inspire great creative concepts and ideas for ourselves and for our clients. With the right set of eyes and experience, these programs can be incredibly useful tools to expedite the creative process.
To make this ranking as fair as possible, we are going to use the same prompt for each tool:
“A beaver playing the banjo.”
Before we dive in, it’s crucial to note we’re not aware of the specific purpose you have in mind for the images you’re about to generate. Therefore, it’s your responsibility to ensure you’re operating within the copyright laws of the tool you choose to use.
The Best Free AI Image generators
S Tier: Image Creator by Microsoft Designer
Microsoft Designer is completely free and only requires you to sign in through your Outlook account. Not only does the image look great, but Designer gets the fact that a beaver playing the banjo shouldn’t be severe or hyperrealistic.
The beaver below is dressed to impress and even has an audience. There are some inconsistencies with how the strings attach to the tuning pegs and the hands of the beaver with the hat on. Other than that, it’s a great image. We’re rating this banjo beaver at the S Tier.
A Tier: ImageFX: Google Test Kitchen
Recently, Bard became Gemini. Bard was great and was a groundbreaking large language model. However, Gemini’s multimodal architecture allows it to intertwine modalities like text, code, audio, and images to generate responses.
Signing up for Google’s test kitchen is incredibly easy. All you have to do is log into a Google account, enable features, and get on your way. The platform is easy to use and can be tweaked with stylistic guidelines like abstract, watercolors, you name it.
The beaver looks great and is musically inclined, even though he’s not fretting the banjo. However, the tuning pegs at the top are inconsistent. Other than that, the detail here is great, and the image’s resolution is extremely high. We’re rating this banjo beaver at the A tier.
B Tier: NightCafe
NightCafe is free, but it does limit the number of responses you can create based on how many credits you have. The base version of NightCafe predominantly uses the Stable Diffusion algorithm, which produces simple text-to-image image responses at medium resolution.
This beaver is kind of creepy for some reason, but the image quality is exceptional. However, unlike some of the other examples, NightCafe’s tone seems to be slightly off; this isn’t a serious subject that should be portrayed in the environment below. We’re rating this banjo beaver at the B Tier.
C Tier: Dream by Wombo AI
Dream is easy to sign up for and free to use. That being said, there are noticeably more paywalls than the other tools, including limited image results and art styles. The image results are average at best (notice the mini banjo near his foot?), and the resolution is decent. Overall, there are better options that are more customizable and require less regenerating. We’re rating this banjo beaver at the C Tier.
D Tier: Dream Studio by Stability
Not to be confused with the previous example, Dream Studio by Stability AI leverages the same stable diffusion model as Nightcafe. Overall, this is a decent rendering, but there are some inconsistencies with how the face has been modeled. That being said, Dream Studio has some decent customization options, including an aspect ratio slider, a “number of results” option, and even a negative input field: somewhere where you can say what you don’t want the image to look like. We’re rating this banjo beaver at the D Tier.
F Tier: Canva AI
Canva AI allows you to generate 50 free images before having to upgrade to a premium plan. If you’re planning on generating graphics within a given format or if you’re a regular Canva user, this might be the choice for you. However, if you’re looking just to generate AI images we would not recommend Canva. The image quality is noticeably worse than the other options. We’re rating this banjo beaver at the F Tier.
How do Free AI Image Generators Work?
Without context, AI doesn’t have the means to create. To gain context, AI models will typically store and/or “scrape” a large number of images from the web, which is similar to how Google crawls, indexes, and shows search results. Without the broader context of the web, AI wouldn’t have the vast network of information it needs to learn and show results.
Typically, images have text descriptions or text shown within the image itself. Deep learning algorithms are programmed to learn and relate text to images. Once the AI has collected enough information, it needs a way to recall it only when needed.
Neural networks allow the AI to classify and compare all the information it has collected into data points called nodes. When you provide an AI model with an input, it sifts and filters through billions of nodes (as shown as hidden layers below) in order to return an output. The most accurate and efficient way of returning that output is constantly evolving since there are several types of generative AI models that are constantly being optimized and refined. Generally, the idea is to turn abstraction (input) into reality (output).
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Where, When, and How to Use AI Image Generators
AI image generators are best used in harmony with creativity rather than in place of it. There are millions of applications for this type of tech, none of which will have much impact without a great idea behind it. We encourage you to use these as tools rather than crutches. Explore an idea or vibe, use it to imagine something great, or transform something you’re already working on into something completely different.
The power and flexibility of these tools are awe-inspiring; nobody would have believed that this technology would exist 20 years ago. You have the ability to generate pretty much anything you want to see at the click of a button.
