In the rapidly evolving world of digital art, a new wave of creative expression is currently being empowered by the integration of artificial intelligence. These AI tools and plugins are broadening and democratizing the canvas of creativity and quickly shaping the landscape of the NFT space in the process.
Artists like Claire Silver and Pindar Van Arman have emerged as leading advocates of AI art in the Web3 community, and platforms like Brain Drops have emerged to cater to the growing movement. As AI art continues to grow in popularity and accessibility, it has prompted a wide range of intellectual debates around ethical concerns, copyright issues, and much more.
If you’re an artist looking to integrate AI into your workflow or simply a curious bystander looking to play around with the tools that have upended the creative industry in the last year or so, we’re here to help. Here are 18 groundbreaking AI tools that are changing the game for digital artists and carving out a niche for themselves in the creative landscape.
Midjourney
As AI takes the art world by storm, Midjourney is leading the charge. Midjourney is an AI tool that revolutionizes the digital art creation process, transforming simple text-based prompts into captivating designs. Featuring a wide range of prompt commands, Midjourney is known for its algorithms’ ability to create photorealistic images with an emphasis on beauty — though, of course, this is subject to individual experience and taste.
The program’s blend feature is a standout, allowing multiple artists to impart their unique styles to a single piece, perfect for joint NFT collections. Its advanced machine learning algorithms generate art in user-defined parameters, offering artists a creative edge.
Midjourney remains a favorite of the NFT space, with many top creators regularly crediting it for its role in their artistic process. Having recently released Midjourney v5.1, the program’s capabilities have taken an even bigger jump forward, making it a great place for artists new to the AI art tool scene and veteran users alike.
DALL-E
From OpenAI, the creators of GPT-3, comes DALL-E, an AI program that generates images from textual descriptions. This tool allows artists to create highly specific and unique digital art pieces simply by describing their concepts in words. From abstract ideas to the most peculiar requests, DALL-E can bring them to life, offering a limitless range of possibilities.
This tool’s ability to handle prompts dealing in the abstract and the conceptual set it apart from programs like Midjourney. The resulting one-of-a-kind, tailored images it creates constitute a valuable resource for digital artists looking to create distinctive and highly personalized works. Whether you want a two-story pink house flying in the sky or a turtle wearing a tuxedo, DALL-E brings the most whimsical ideas to life.
Stable Diffusion
Stable Diffusion is a breakthrough in the realm of AI-assisted art creation. It’s an AI tool that excels in maintaining stylistic consistency across various artworks. By inputting a style sample, the AI replicates this style in new designs, ensuring a cohesive aesthetic throughout an artist’s series.
This consistency is crucial for digital artists looking to establish a signature style and build a recognizable brand. Moreover, Stable Diffusion’s ability to create unique and aesthetically cohesive collections not only enhances an artist’s portfolio but also makes it a valuable tool for those active in the NFT space.
It’s important to note that the company behind Stable Diffusion, Stability AI, released DreamStudio last year as its official text-to-image AI web app. DreamStudio features a decently user-friendly interface, the ability to upload your own images for prompt input, filters, and plenty more. Stability AI continues to iterate on its products and recently released StableStudio, an open-sourced version of DreamStudio. Overall, Stability AI offers AI art tool lovers a cheaper (read: free) alternative to services like DALL-E and Midjourney that require a subscription.
Runway ML
A creative suite with a broad range of AI tools, Runway ML offers a plethora of pre-trained models for creating unique digital art. Its user-friendly interface enables artists to harness sophisticated machine-learning techniques without requiring extensive coding skills. With the ability to experiment with a broad range of AI models, NFT artists can generate distinctive and innovative art pieces that stand out in the crowded market.
Furthermore, Runway ML’s versatility allows artists to explore and incorporate new artistic styles and techniques into their work, thus enhancing their creative potential and the uniqueness of their outputs. Runway’s Gen 2 model comes with various modes that allow for text to video, text and image to video, and image to video capabilities, and offers various filters and stylization tools as well. It’s a free tool that offers three paid tiers to open up the service’s best aspects. So far, Runway’s Gen 2 model experiments have resulted in some truly impressive AI-animated creations.
NVIDIA Canvas
Available on PC (sorry, Mac users), NVIDIA turns simple, paint-like drawings into realistic scenes (and recently added wraparound, 360-degree panorama landscape functionality). Users can output their creations to apps like Adobe Photoshop, Blender, and more. NVIDIA is a great tool for those who want to see how AI creates in real-time alongside a user’s input rather than front-loading a prompt and waiting to see what the AI will create.
Kaiber
Kaiber is a compelling AI video generation tool that lets users create video content from text prompts, images, and even their own videos. Great for artists looking to experiment with music video creation, the service comes with a four-tiered subscription plan: Explorer, Pro, Artist, and Enterprise, each scaling up in price starting from $5 a month. While Kaiber does come with a free version, any video output you download will come with a watermark without a paid subscription.
GANPaint Studio
GANPaint Studio employs Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to offer artists unparalleled control over their digital creations. Artists can add, remove, or alter specific elements within an image, making it particularly beneficial for NFT artists aiming to create intricate, unique pieces.
The ability to manipulate images down to minute details allows for the creation of highly personalized artwork. Furthermore, GANPaint Studio’s innovative approach to image manipulation can inspire new artistic ideas, encourage experimentation, and ultimately lead to the creation of more compelling works.
Deforum
Deforum is a compelling AI tool that lets users create frame-by-frame animations from AI outputs using Stable Diffusion as the underlying technology to power it all. Free to use, Deforum is a Google Colab Notebook that allows users to write and execute code via a browser.
While it’s an immensely powerful tool for artists looking to experiment with AI art animation, using Deforum isn’t the most user-friendly experience and is quite technically dense. For those looking for a guide on how to get started, Claire Silver has a step-by-step breakdown that walks you through everything you need to get going. If you’re able to get past the high barrier of entry, Deforum can open up an entirely new spectrum of creative exploration and is well worth the effort.
Deep Dream Generator
Deep Dream Generator uses deep learning algorithms to transform ordinary images into unique and often surreal pieces of art. This AI tool enables NFT artists to convert simple photos into dreamlike artworks, making each piece distinctive and appealing to a wide range of collectors. Further, the unpredictable and imaginative results that Deep Dream Generator provides can inspire artists, fuel their creativity, and add an extra layer of depth and intrigue to their NFT collections, making it a valuable tool in their creative process.
Prisma
Prisma is an AI tool that allows users to transform photos into artworks utilizing the style of famous artists. With over 300 art styles in its library, Prisma enables NFT artists to create diverse and unique collections. By applying different artistic styles to their images, artists can create a wide variety of works, each carrying its own unique appeal. Furthermore, Prisma’s ease of use makes it accessible to both seasoned and novice digital artists, allowing them to explore and create with a wide palette of artistic styles.
Artbreeder
Artbreeder utilizes genetic algorithms to create unique pieces of digital art, offering endless possibilities for artists. With an interface that is decidedly more reminiscent of programs like Microsoft Paint than of Midjourney or Stable Diffusion, Artbreeder is a good choice for those who want to play around in a sandbox of image generation and is a good place for exploring artistic ideas.
Artists can either select and blend several images from an on-site library or manipulate individual parameters to create a new output, ensuring the production of one-of-a-kind pieces of art. Moreover, Artbreeder’s power to generate countless variations of art pieces allows artists to maintain a consistent output of innovative work. Users can start for free at 10 credits a month, but they will have to pay up to $40 a month to access all of its features and obtain the highest amount of output credits.
Playground
https://t.co/Q61ZexHykq – Easy interface, free credits to start, lots of filters specific to which model you choose (Stable Diffusion, Playground, Dalle2), image upload and inpainting. The woolitize, dark comic, and claymation filters are so fun! 🫠 pic.twitter.com/jQQ9tDqAsi
— Claire Silver 🌸 (@ClaireSilver12) April 2, 2023
Playground is an innovative AI platform that provides tools for creating, prototyping, and deploying AI applications. Its user-friendly interface and wide array of pre-trained models offer a valuable resource for NFT artists, allowing them to experiment with AI technology without requiring extensive programming skills.
Dream by WOMBO
Dream by WOMBO is an AI-powered tool that allows artists to turn simple sketches or images into stunning pieces of art. Feeding the AI a source image or sketch generates a unique interpretation, adding depth and complexity to the original. For NFT artists, this tool opens a realm of possibilities, turning rudimentary ideas into visually appealing digital art.
Disco Diffusion
From the Disco Diffusion era — before Midjourney and Stable Diffusion.
Lots of kinetic energy. Will be following up with an updated reinterpreted🧵 pic.twitter.com/g7xxzqcTiw
— artistsjourney.eth (@wilfredlee) May 9, 2023
Disco Diffusion is an open-source, clip-guided diffusion AI model and tool that offers an advanced approach to the creation of digital art by employing diffusion models. By progressively transforming random noise into a coherent image, Disco Diffusion creates unique outputs that could be interesting for artists in the NFT space to explore.
Similar to DALL-E’s penchant for creating abstract, imaginative outputs rather than photorealistic ones, Disco Diffusion specializes in the strange. The tool is great for those looking for unexpected and wild results from their outputs.
NightCafe Creator
NightCafe Creator is an AI-powered tool that enables users to create uniquely generated art. Artists can either start with a blank canvas and allow the AI to generate art or provide a seed image to influence the AI’s creative process. This flexibility allows artists to create a broad range of unique and captivating digital art pieces. Additionally, the tool’s ability to produce a high volume of unique pieces can help artists maintain a consistent output.
DeepArtEffects
This is one my AI generated pieces it’s not a paid sub then I added a statue into the mix the last two are the results from Deep art effects pic.twitter.com/tfGoGITQzx
— Joshua James (@FishDaddyJosh) June 22, 2022
DeepArtEffects is an AI tool that uses style transfer techniques to convert photos into digital artworks. With a wide array of artistic styles at its disposal, DeepArtEffects enables artists to create diverse and appealing collections. Its cloud API for integration into other applications or workflows further enhances its utility.
BeFunky
BeFunky is a user-friendly graphic design tool that integrates AI technology for advanced photo editing and digital art creation. With a range of features, such as AI-powered background removal, filters, and effects, BeFunky allows artists to easily manipulate and enhance their digital artworks. This versatility ensures that artists can create a diverse range of works, each with its unique appeal. Furthermore, BeFunky’s simplicity allows artists of all skill levels to explore and experiment with digital art techniques.
PaintsChainer
PaintsChainer is an AI coloring tool that uses deep learning to automatically colorize sketches. This tool is highly valuable for artists who begin their work with hand-drawn sketches, as it significantly speeds up the digital coloring process. PaintsChainer also allows artists to retain control over the final product by adjusting colors and shading to their preference.
By automating a traditionally time-consuming part of the digital art process, PaintsChainer allows digital artists to focus more on the creative aspects of their work. Furthermore, its ability to produce high-quality, vibrant colorizations can add a new level of sophistication to their collections.
Mix, match, and have fun.
One of the great joys of discovering a suite of new AI art tools is throwing them at each other just to see what happens. Need some images to blend in Midjourney? Whip something up in Dream or Stable Diffusion. Want to see what Kaiber does with a video prompt? Dive into the insanity that is Luma and. We’re living in a golden age of art tool proliferation — take full advantage of it.
Editor’s note: This article was written by an nft now staff member in collaboration with OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Bard.