With the advancement of generative AI, creating images is now as simple as entering a few words and clicking a button. AI text-to-image generators take user prompts and transform them into visuals. For example, the prompt “Cat bunny” could generate an image blending features of both animals.
The growing popularity of AI art tools like ImagineArt and DALL-E has sparked curiosity about how AI-generated art works. What drives the technical and creative decisions behind each piece? And how will this impact artists and designers in the future?
What Is AI Art?
AI art refers to digital artwork created using AI-powered tools that generate visuals based on user prompts. These tools rely on advanced machine learning models trained on vast datasets to interpret input and produce unique results.
AI art generators can transform text or image prompts into new visuals, text, or even audio, making them valuable for marketing, music videos, professional websites, and other creative projects.
How Does AI Art Generation Work?
While distinguishing between a sandwich and a pineapple is easy for humans, it’s more challenging for a computer. Researchers train machines by feeding them millions of images, annotating the data sets with text references.
The machine is then fine-tuned and adjusted until it can identify and differentiate images, allowing it to recognize pineapples from sandwiches—and eventually create its own.
These new tools are truly remarkable—and publicly accessible. In September 2022, OpenAI made an exciting announcement: DALLE-2 would be open to everyone, leading to the widespread availability of various AI art generators for public use.
In 2022, we saw the emergence of ImagineArt, Midjourney, Craiyon, and the often debated Stable Diffusion. If you’re interested in trying them out, these programs offer free trials. After that, you’ll need to subscribe to Midjourney or purchase tokens for DALL-E.
AI-Generated Art: A New Wave of Creativity
The creativity of AI is hard to ignore. Drawing inspiration from a vast range of renowned artists and iconic works, AI combines these influences in ways that humans can’t replicate. However, ethical concerns remain: copyright issues and accuracy are still uncertain.
Today, anyone can create AI-generated art. While this leads to humorous and intriguing content online, the rapid growth of AI art leaves little time to fully grasp its potential and the impact it may have.
In 2022, a machine-generated painting titled Work Theatre d’Opera Spatial won the Colorado State Fair Art Show, sparking controversy in the art world. Its creator, Jason M. Allen, had no qualms about the achievement. The line between human-created and AI-generated art is becoming increasingly blurred. In 2018, artist Edward Bellamy sold AI-generated art to a museum for $432,000.
The trend shows no signs of slowing down. We are witnessing the evolution of art unfold in real-time, with each image marking a step toward a future filled with sharper, more realistic AI-generated creations.
Top AI Art Generators 2025
1. ImagineArt
ImagineArt is an advanced AI Art generator designed for professional use. It combines powerful AI models like Stable Diffusion and Flux, so you get all the perks of these technologies in one tool.
2. Stable Diffusion
Stable Diffusion is an open-source model known for its flexibility. You can find the model on Hugging Face. This allows you to generate images from text prompts, and you can perform what’s known as in-painting and out-painting. That means you can fill in missing or removed parts of an image as well as extend an image.
3. Adobe Firefly
Adobe Firefly offers AI art generation directly within applications like Photoshop and Illustrator. You can also access it directly at their website for free. Its your best bet if you’re already in the Adobe ecosystem.
4. Ideogram
This art generation tool was launched fairly recently in August 2023 and it’s a web-based platform. Ideogram specializes in generating art with legible text, and that’s a feature that sets it apart from most other models.
5. DALL-E 3
DALL-E 3 is the AI art generator from ChatGPT – OpenAI. You can access this directly from ChatGPT with a free account, although you only get two generations per day. With a Plus account, on the other hand, you can create more images, but plans start at $20 per month.