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One simple prompt can make AI images come alive in Facebook Messenger and Instagram
Meta AI has one of the easiest ways of generating AI images I've tried, superior even to Gemini's Imagen 3 and ChatGPT's DALL-E 3 on their free tiers, because there are very few restrictions on how many images you can create, or what type of images. On their free tiers, Google's Gemini image creation won't let you create images of people at all, and ChatGPT's DALL-E 3 limits you to just a few images a day. In contrast, Meta AI will let you create images of people without a problem (just not famous people), and I've tried hard to hit a daily limit, but haven't managed it yet. You can get to Meta AI in a variety of ways. There's the website meta.ai, which is great if you're on a laptop, but the easiest way is via Meta's suite of social apps - Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Meta AI should be available outside Europe, but the UK launch, for instance, is still rolling out. Meta AI supposedly launched in the UK two weeks ago; however most UK people I've talked to say it's still not available in Meta's apps yet, but that should change any day now. You'll know when you've got it because you'll see a Meta AI logo in your app's menu bar. Using AI in an app like Messenger might feel unintuitive at first, but when you think about it, it makes perfect sense, since Meta AI is essentially a chatbot, exactly like ChatGPT is. Messenger is therefore the perfect app in which to use a chatbot, since you use it to chat with people already. To launch Meta AI all you need to do is tap the icon that's next to Chats in the bottom menu bar, and you'll initiate a conversation with the Meta AI chatbot. Just like ChatGPT you can ask it to help you with anything from ideas for Christmas presents for your family to planning a vacation. You can also invite Meta AI into your group conversations by tapping the @ symbol and then tapping on Meta AI. You can then ask it a question, and everybody in the group chat will see the answer. One thing Meta AI is very good at is creating images. Just type, "Imagine", and then type whatever you want to see in the Meta AI chat. As we mentioned there's no restriction on creating images of people, so prompts like "Imagine an athletic person running in the rain and winning a race" produces an image, like this: Sure, it's got that slightly fake 'AI' look to it, and the paid-for versions of ChatGPT and Gemini produce much more realistic images, but it's quick and convenient to use on a smartphone. What's more, you can then go on and refine it, and Meta AI will know what you're talking about, so just type "not raining", and you'll get another image, of the running person, but not in the rain, like this: As you can see there's less rain. I wouldn't say there was no rain, so results aren't always perfect, but you can take it further. If you then type "animate it" you get a great four-second animated version of the same picture. It's even easier to animate images on the meta.ai website as it gives you a button called 'Animate' to click. With features like these, Meta AI could soon be my go-to source for creating quick AI images, and animating them - I just didn't imagine that I'd ever be doing it in the Messenger app!
TechRadar
Wed, 23 Oct, 12:00 PM UTC
Meta's New 'Imagine Me' AI Tool: Create Personalized AI Images of Yourself
Meta introduces 'Imagine Me', an AI-powered feature that allows users to generate personalized AI images of themselves in various scenarios and styles. This tool expands on Meta's existing AI image generation capabilities.
9 Sources
Wed, 24 Jul, 12:02 AM UTC
IMGCreator is the free AI tool you're probably not using -- 5 prompts to get you started
There are dozens of fantastic generative AI tools you can use to create custom images from a series of text-based prompts, but while you likely know all about Google Gemini, Midjourney, or Adobe Firefly, there's a good chance you've not checked out IMGCreator.AI from Microsoft. As the name suggests, it's a model that can generate images using prompts as parameters, but it's also savvy enough to adjust images you upload to it -- like removing a photobomber or another passer-by. Below you'll find a series of prompts that leverage the power of IMCreator.AI, with the potential for it to be added to our best AI image generator list in the coming months. It's worth pointing out that IMGCreator has its own 'prompt guide' which you can find here. This covers just about everything, from the original ideation through to edits and stylistic changes. Once you land on the IMGCreator site, you'll need to pick between three tools - AI Image Generator, AI Image Editor, and AI portrait. It's worth noting you can't do anything until you sign up. You can do so via Google or using your own email address. You get 30 image Credits to use to begin with. Enter your prompt, and then select your Category and Add Style. With that out of the way, here are some fun prompts we used. To kick things off, we imagined Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson as the protagonist in a fantasy RPG. It's pretty vague, and what we got was a heavily stylised, splash-ink image that looks a little too unrealistic. With that, we pivoted slightly, and asked for The Rock as a character in GTA V with the relevant style. Here's what we got for this prompt: "The Rock as the lead character in a GTA game" -- it's not perfect, but it does offer some of the stylised shading of Rockstar's games, complete with a city in the background. Looking for a shot that perfectly encapsulates that morning coffee? We used this prompt: "A cup of dark coffee in a mug on a wooden table, with daylight streaking in through the windows and a teaspoon nearby" to test IMGCreator's chops when it came to lighting requests and additive prompts for extra objects. We picked 'Realistic photo' for the category, and 'warm lighting'. Here's what we got: For this one, we focused on the idea of landing at a faraway destination and put in some detail about what would be found as the user looks out of the window. Here's the prompt: "Image from the viewpoint of an aeroplane window, showing lush beaches and clear water below" and it allows us to guarantee an aerial perspective, while the surf certainly looks inviting. It's worth noting one of the options presented gave a bit of a bizarre beach with a massive gap in it, so the fact you get multiple images generated for your prompt is certainly handy. There's a 'Golden Hour' preset that lets you ensure every image looks like it was captured at the perfect time of day, but it doesn't hurt to add it to the prompt, either. We asked for the following, with 'Golden hour' turned off but 'Wide shot turned on': "Golden hour landscape shot of the sun coming up behind a ship in the sea, with calm waters". It's curious that both ships in the generated images were large vessels, but maybe boat would work better for a relaxing 'postcard' image. My son is a huge fan of Pixar movies, so I wanted to put IMGCreator to the test by asking for an AI-built, Pixar image of myself -- using only online reference material for my appearance. "Lloyd Coombes as a Toy Story character in front of wallpaper with clouds on it" was the prompt, but with the Anime 'Disney Pixar' a paid exclusive, I went for the 'Realistic Photo' category with 'RPGv5' as my image. And what I got was, well, pretty haunting. Your results may vary and, of course, try using your own name -- but I for one can't wait to see Toy Tor 5 in cinemas. While there are a whole host of tools out there for subtly removing people from the background of your photographic masterpieces, some of them require things like Apple Intelligence, or Google's Magic Eraser. If you don't have that handy, IMGCreator.AI is a great way to do it. It offers an instant background changer, background removal, or option to generate AI models to showcase your items. The process is simple -- upload the image, and then select what you want to remove. Depending on the size of the image, you could be waiting a little while for the model to take in the information, so smaller pictures are recommended. The app can suggest backgrounds based on what's in your image (like the autumnal theme), and also offer specific crops to fit various social media templates. While there are some kinks to be worked out (in my testing I've seen a few 'infinite loading' screens), IMG.Creator.AI is a fantastic tool that's very versatile -- and we haven't even got into generating an AI profile picture for you yet. It's still got some way to go, but for now, it's easily looking likely to rival Midjourney et al in the months to come.
Tom's Guide
Sun, 2 Mar, 10:01 AM UTC
I've just seen the future of memes -- Pika launches 1.5 and it can cake-ify anything
Pika Labs, one of the first commercial artificial intelligence video platforms, has finally come out with its version 1.5 model, and it's taken an interesting turn compared to the likes of Runway Gen-3 and Luma Labs, focusing on fun and memes as a way to draw attention to its capabilities. As well as updates to the underlying model that include image-to-video, text-to-video, and ever-improving degrees of motion realism, there are custom-built effects called PikaEffects that let you take an image and manipulate parts of it to turn it into cake, squish it into slime, or crush it. Soon after launch, there was some heavy load on the Pika Labs servers, meaning it was taking some people up to 12 hours to get a video to generate, but that seems to be correcting itself now, especially if you create one of the meme-effect-style videos. My personal favorite is the explosion. I decided to put it to the test, creating a number of images and then trying out the different default Pikaffects, including blowing up a London telephone box, crushing a chessboard, and inflating a skull. The equation for artificial intelligence seems to be data plus compute power plus time equals a better model, and that's exactly what Pika Labs has achieved. The company has been taking the time over the last few months to cook up something special with features not found on any other platform. While there are a number of default meme effects, apparently there are hidden effects that you can add. I suspect at some point in the future people will be able to create their own effects and share them with others. I'd quite like to see text effects where an object is transformed into 3D text on the screen. At some point, when the server load is a little calmer, I plan to do a proper deep dive into the other capabilities of the model. For now, to put it to the test, I created five images in Ideogram where an object or entity is front and center and then ran them all through Pika Labs. Image prompt: "A beautifully detailed vintage typewriter sitting on a wooden desk, in a cozy study with soft natural light streaming in through a window, surrounded by books and papers, warm and nostalgic atmosphere." Image prompt: "An astronaut's space helmet resting on a table in a futuristic space station, with the reflection of distant stars and planets in the visor, soft blue ambient lighting, sleek and highly detailed textures." Image prompt: "A classic British red telephone booth standing tall on a quiet London street, with wet cobblestones reflecting the streetlights, iconic architecture in the background, evening twilight, detailed and realistic." Image prompt: "A grand piano in a grand concert hall, polished black finish reflecting the soft stage lights, the elegant interior of the hall with red velvet curtains and rows of seats, dramatic and serene atmosphere." Image prompt: "A bright red double-decker bus parked on a busy London street, with people walking by and iconic buildings in the background, mid-afternoon sunlight, highly detailed and realistic, cityscape." These aren't all perfect, but they are an early indicator of one new way AI video could be used in the future -- to create gifs and memes. I was able to generate 5-second gifs from each of the videos, and in each case, they were under 10MB, perfect for sharing on social or in a message. Apple is already pointing some of its generative AI in the meme direction with emoji creation and image customization based on someone's photo, so maybe this is the next obvious evolution.
Tom's Guide
Mon, 7 Oct, 8:03 AM UTC
This new AI-powered tool is about to make life easier for ecommerce websites built on Hostinger.
Hostinger, one of the best website builders, has just launched a new AI-powered tool that allows users to automatically create product descriptions by uploading a product image. All users need to do is upload one or more images of the product they are selling and then hit the 'Generate text' button. The AI-Powered Product Information Generator will automatically analyze the image and suggest a title, subtitle, description, and label. You can then edit and refine the generated text to ensure it accurately represents the product and aligns with your brand. Product description fatigue is a familiar fate for online store owners. Countless hours are spent uploading new products and trying to come up with creative and unique product descriptions for each one. It can be a significant drain on resources and costly to those who outsource the task. Hostinger's new AI tool seeks to drastically reduce the time ecommerce businesses spend on undertaking these types of tasks. The new tool aims to help all users save time but will be especially useful to those who upload a high volume of products and for those looking to generate unique descriptions for products with multiple variations. The AI-Powered Product Information Generator is the latest addition to Hostinger's collection of AI-powered tools aimed at helping users build better websites faster than ever before. Other tools available on the platform include an AI writer, AI image generator, and AI heatmap. Hostinger also offers one of the best AI website builders on the market. This latest addition follows an industry wide trend that sees the top website building platforms leverage AI technology to support users throughout their website building and management journey.
TechRadar
Wed, 31 Jul, 2:00 PM UTC