Nothing beats framing original artwork from your favorite artist, or actual photos that have beautifully captured weddings, graduations, your latest travels and other special moments.
But we have enjoyed seeing customers upload stunning AI-generated images for us to print and custom frame. Using just a few words of text, this new technology can create previously unimagined pictures across a variety of styles.
Below, we've outlined some of the more popular services with examples of their capabilities. If you are looking for something new and potentially a little out there, these apps are worth a look!
Lensa Magic Avatars
Anime-style portrait of Andy Warhol created by Lensa
Lensa is an AI-powered photo editing app which allows you to generate dozens of portraits. You submit 10-20 photos of yourself and the AI will generate a package of 50, 100, or 200 unique images in 10 different styles, such as Mystical, Sci-fi, and Anime.
These portraits not only make for fun profile pictures and Instagram posts, they can also be printed and framed for yourself or as a gift.
What's unique about Lensa is that it allows you to access 4k resolution versions of your portraits when you have a subscription, which means you can get high-quality, large prints.
If you are after a larger print, you'll need to upload the 4k version of the image, which will produce a quality print up to 15" in most cases.
Lensa's Magic Avatar feature works on only one subject at a time and can only be used on photos of adults, but they offer many other advanced editing features you can use on just about any photo.
Midjourney
Midjourney is an AI-powered image generator that can create brand new images based on textual prompts. A text input such as "a glittering, futuristic space ship orbiting the moon of a gas giant planet while clouds swirl in the sky" can conjure up an entire world.
Midjourney showcase - Image credits: Hanzo, hanfei, Groucho, asianlike
It uses a combination of natural language processing and computer vision algorithms to interpret the prompts and generate images accordingly.
Midjourney is notable for its ability to create realistic and detailed images, especially featuring human subjects.
Created with the prompt "A rave at Hogwarts summer 1998" - credit @spacecasetay on Twitter
Prequel
Prequel has similar features to the Lensa app, but we found it had many more options for AI filters with artwork effects.
The Cartoon+ effect uses AI to apply a filter and identify the subject, so you can keep the background or change it.
A Prequel filter applied to baby photos and framed in our triptych collage picture frame
DALL-E
DALL-E is an image generator from OpenAI that can also create original pictures based on textual descriptions.
It became one of the first widely used tools in this space, creating a sensation around its ability to dream up complex, imaginative and surreal images.
David Scnurr x DALL·E original image, shown inside our Weathered Grey frame with 2" of matting
One notable innovation from DALL·E is "outpainting", where the AI is used to extend an image beyond its original borders, adding totally new visual elements in a similar style or taking the artwork in totally new directions.
Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, extended by August Kamp × DALL·E using outpainting
Artbreeder
Artbreeder is an AI-powered image manipulation tool that can create new pictures by remixing existing ones.
It uses machine learning to generate new images based on the characteristics of the inputs and custom filters.
Remixing traits inside an image using Artbreeder
You can manipulate various aspects like color, texture, and shape and more, to create entirely new and unique artwork.
Deep Dream Generator
This AI image generator uses a technique known as "deep dreaming" to create abstract and surreal artwork based on your prompts and a specified style (e.g. - abstract, classical, impressionist, etc.).
Image created by Alla Machneva using Deep Dream Generator
The system uses a neural network to generate the new images by amplifying and modifying certain features of the original, allowing you to control the level of abstraction and detail.
RunwayML
RunwayML offers a user-friendly interface that among other things allows its users to easily generate new images from a simple chat intefrace.
This service is notable for its flexibility, enabling experimentation with a wide range of AI models and techniques. They even have tools for enhancing and generating video!
These services are evolving at breakneck pace, and new companies and features will likely emerge over time.
While these images can be fascinating and creative, please keep in mind that potential ethical concerns have been raised around the use of AI-generated assets, including issues related to privacy, biases, and ownership.
But we hope this has been a useful and informative resource. Perhaps you've discovered a new creative tool that allows you to make something totally unique and worthy of framing with us!
