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Lesson 1566 of 1570
Image Generation Lab
DALL·E, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, Flux — when to use what.
There’s no single “image AI.” There are at least four big ones, each with its own personality. Picking the right one matters more than you’d think.
The big four
DALL·E 3 (OpenAI)
Best at following exact instructions. Built into ChatGPT. Conservative style — it rarely looks “weird.”
Midjourney
The one artists mostly use. Incredible aesthetic sense, but worst at following detailed instructions.
Stable Diffusion
Open-source. You can run it yourself. Endless community modifications exist.
Flux (Black Forest Labs)
Newer. Great at text-in-images and hands. Fast and open-weight.
Style words to try
- Watercolor, pastel, oil painting, ink wash
- Pixel art, voxel, low-poly, 3D render
- Studio Ghibli-inspired, Pixar-like, flat vector, isometric
- Film photograph, 35mm, golden hour, neon noir
How diffusion actually works (in 60 seconds)
Start with pure random noise. The AI has been trained that noise can be “denoised” toward images. It does this in about 30–50 small steps, each time getting closer to what your prompt describes. The final result is the noise sculpted into a picture.
Licensing — the gotcha
Just because you generated an image doesn’t mean you own it in the legal sense. U.S. copyright law currently says pure AI-generated images can’t be copyrighted. If you want ownership, you have to meaningfully modify the output. Good to know before selling anything.
Tutor
Curious about “Image Generation Lab”?
Ask anything about this lesson. I’ll answer using just what you’re reading — short, friendly, grounded.
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