Image/Video/Audio Deep-Dive

Generative AI beyond text is a full stack of specialized models. Know who made what, what they’re good at, and what they cost. All of this is moving fast — check current benchmarks before committing to a vendor.

Image generation

• DALL·E 3 — best instruction-following, in ChatGPT.
• Midjourney v7 — best aesthetic, worst controllability.
• Stable Diffusion 3.5 / SDXL — open, self-hostable.
• Flux Pro / Flux Schnell — best text rendering in images.
• Imagen 4 — Google’s flagship.

Video generation

• Sora 2 (OpenAI) — up to 60 seconds, consistent physics.
• Veo 3 (Google DeepMind) — audio-plus-video synthesis.
• Runway Gen-4 — filmmaker-focused, best camera controls.
• Kling, Luma Dream Machine — strong open alternatives.

Audio / voice / music

• ElevenLabs v3 — voice cloning and TTS.
• Suno v5 / Udio — song generation with vocals.
• Stable Audio Open — open-weight audio generation.

The provenance problem

As generation gets indistinguishable from reality, provenance — the verifiable trail of where something came from — becomes more important than the output itself. The C2PA standard (backed by Adobe, Microsoft, OpenAI, the BBC) embeds cryptographic metadata in AI outputs. Expect platforms to increasingly require or display this.

The ethics checkpoint

Voice cloning enables scams. Photorealistic image generation enables non-consensual deepfakes. Music generation disrupts real creators’ livelihoods. Every generative tool decision is also an ethical decision — whose labor are you displacing, whose likeness are you using, whose consent do you have?