These tools work using a process that is often based on some­thing called a dif­fu­sion mod­el. Think of it like this: the AI is trained by look­ing at mil­lions of images from the inter­net, along with the text used to describe them. It learns to con­nect words like "dog," "blue," or "for­est" with the pat­terns, col­ors, and shapes in those pic­tures. The dif­fu­sion process itself works by start­ing with a field of ran­dom noise—like TV sta­t­ic. Then, guid­ed by your text prompt, the AI grad­u­al­ly refines this noise, step-by-step, remov­ing the sta­t­ic and shap­ing it into a coher­ent image that match­es your descrip­tion. It's like a sculp­tor start­ing with a block of mar­ble and chip­ping away until a stat­ue appears, except the AI is chip­ping away at noise based on your instruc­tions.
There are many dif­fer­ent AI image gen­er­a­tors avail­able, each with its own style and way of work­ing. Some of the most well-known ones are Mid­jour­ney, Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion, and DALL‑E 3. They can cre­ate every­thing from real­is­tic-look­ing pho­tos to illus­tra­tions and abstract art.
How to Use an AI Pic­ture Mak­er: A Few Exam­ples
Get­ting start­ed is straight­for­ward. While the spe­cif­ic but­tons and inter­faces vary, the core idea is the same: you write a prompt, and the AI gives you a pic­ture. Let's look at a few pop­u­lar options.
Mid­jour­ney
Mid­jour­ney is known for cre­at­ing artis­tic and often beau­ti­ful images. For a long time, it worked exclu­sive­ly through a chat app called Dis­cord, which might seem strange, but it's a sim­ple process once you do it the first time. It now also has a web inter­face which is eas­i­er for begin­ners.
Here is a gen­er­al way to use Mid­jour­ney on Dis­cord:
1. Get a Dis­cord Account: First, you need a free Dis­cord account. You can sign up on their web­site.
2. Join the Mid­jour­ney Serv­er: After sub­scrib­ing to a Mid­jour­ney plan on their web­site, you'll get an invite to their offi­cial Dis­cord serv­er. Accept the invite.
3. Find a "New­bie" Chan­nel: Inside the Mid­jour­ney serv­er, look for chan­nels named some­thing like "#new­bies". This is where you can start cre­at­ing images.
4. Use the /imagine Com­mand: In the mes­sage box of a new­bie chan­nel, type /imagine and a small box labeled "prompt" will appear.
5. Write Your Prompt: Inside that prompt box, type what you want to see. For exam­ple: a dramatic photo of a wolf in a snowy forest at night. Press Enter.
6. Wait and Choose: Mid­jour­ney will gen­er­ate four dif­fer­ent image options based on your prompt. This usu­al­ly takes about a minute. Below the images, you'll see but­tons labeled U1, U2, U3, U4 and V1, V2, V3, V4. "U" stands for upscale, which cre­ates a larg­er, more detailed ver­sion of that spe­cif­ic image (U1 is the top left, U2 is top right, etc.). "V" stands for vari­a­tion, which cre­ates four new images sim­i­lar in style and com­po­si­tion to the one you select­ed.
DALL‑E 3
DALL‑E 3 is made by Ope­nAI, the same com­pa­ny that cre­at­ed Chat­G­PT. It's known for being very good at under­stand­ing nat­ur­al lan­guage and cre­at­ing images that close­ly fol­low the details in a prompt. One of the eas­i­est ways to use it is through Microsoft's Bing Image Cre­ator or direct­ly with­in Chat­G­PT if you have a sub­scrip­tion.
Here's how to use it with Bing's free tool:
1. Go to the Web­site: Nav­i­gate to the Microsoft Bing Image Cre­ator web­site. You will need a Microsoft account to use it.
2. Find the Text Box: You'll see a text box at the top of the page.
3. Type Your Descrip­tion: Write a detailed descrip­tion of the image you want. For instance, "a close-up of a lizard wear­ing a tiny top hat, stu­dio light­ing, high­ly detailed".
4. Gen­er­ate: Click the "Cre­ate" but­ton. The AI will gen­er­ate a few image options for you to choose from and down­load.
DALL‑E 3 is par­tic­u­lar­ly good when your prompt is a full sen­tence. It under­stands rela­tion­ships between objects, num­bers, and posi­tions bet­ter than many oth­er mod­els. For exam­ple, you could ask for "three red balls to the left of a blue cube," and it will often get it right.
Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion
Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion is a bit dif­fer­ent because it's an open-source mod­el. This means the core tech­nol­o­gy is freely avail­able, and many dif­fer­ent web­sites and appli­ca­tions are built using it. You can even install it on your own com­put­er if you have a pow­er­ful enough graph­ics card, which gives you a lot of con­trol but is more tech­ni­cal.
For begin­ners, the eas­i­est way is to use one of the many web­sites that offer a sim­ple inter­face for Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion. A pop­u­lar choice is Dream­Stu­dio, made by Sta­bil­i­ty AI (the cre­ators of Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion).
1. Go to a Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion Web­site: Find a web­site like Dream­Stu­dio or anoth­er online tool that runs Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion.
2. Write a Prompt: Just like the oth­ers, there will be a text box. Enter your descrip­tion.
3. Use Neg­a­tive Prompts (Option­al): Many Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion inter­faces have a "neg­a­tive prompt" box. This is a pow­er­ful fea­ture where you can list things you don't want to see. For exam­ple, if you're cre­at­ing a per­son and the hands look weird, you could add "bad hands, extra fin­gers" to the neg­a­tive prompt to improve the result.
4. Adjust Set­tings: You'll often see more set­tings to play with, like aspect ratio, image qual­i­ty, and spe­cif­ic art styles.
5. Gen­er­ate and Refine: Click gen­er­ate. See what you get, and then adjust your prompt or set­tings to get clos­er to your vision.
Writ­ing Good Prompts Is the Key
The AI is not a mind read­er. The qual­i­ty of the pic­ture you get depends almost entire­ly on the qual­i­ty of your instruc­tions. This is often called "prompt engi­neer­ing."
Here are some direct tips for writ­ing bet­ter prompts:
* Be Spe­cif­ic and Detailed: Don't just say "a car." Say "a vin­tage 1960s red con­vert­ible sports car dri­ving on a coastal road dur­ing sun­set." The more details you give—about the sub­ject, the set­ting, the light­ing, the col­ors, the mood—the bet­ter the AI can under­stand what you want.
* Spec­i­fy the Style: You can tell the AI what style to use. Add words like "dig­i­tal paint­ing," "pho­to­re­al­is­tic," "line art," "water­col­or," "3D mod­el," or even "in the style of Van Gogh." This has a huge impact on the final look.
* Think About Com­po­si­tion and Light­ing: Use pho­tog­ra­phy terms. Words like "wide-angle shot," "macro shot," "close-up," "stu­dio light­ing," "cin­e­mat­ic light­ing," or "gold­en hour" tell the AI how to frame the shot and light the scene.
* Iter­ate: Your first try might not be per­fect. Look at the image and think about how to change your prompt to fix what you don't like. Maybe you need to change a col­or, add a detail, or rephrase your request. Take what the AI gave you and refine your prompt for the next gen­er­a­tion.
For exam­ple, a sim­ple prompt like "dog" might give you a gener­ic car­toon.
A bet­ter prompt would be: "pho­to­graph of a gold­en retriev­er pup­py, sit­ting in a green grass field, hap­py expres­sion, morn­ing sun­light." This gives the AI much more infor­ma­tion to work with: the sub­ject (gold­en retriev­er pup­py), the set­ting (green grass field), the emo­tion (hap­py expres­sion), and the light­ing (morn­ing sun­light). The result will be much clos­er to a spe­cif­ic vision.