We have to admit, a new era of AI has come. AI tools are becoming so accessible and will eventually be part of our daily work. As designers, we have to adapt to the trend and use these fantastic tools to empower us.

Today I will introduce 4 AI tools for generating images/icons. First things first, some of them are still at the early stage and not that ideal. But hopefully in the near future, they will get better.

Tool 1: DALL·E 2 — OpenAI

Link: https://openai.com/dall-e-2/

DALL·E 2 is a state-of-the-art AI system developed by OpenAI that can create unique and imaginative images from textual descriptions. It can generate anything from detailed landscapes to surreal creatures and scenes, making it a powerful tool for designers who want to explore new creative avenues.

Look at these images created by DALL·E 2, which I love A LOT!

My prompt was “A moon rabbit and a tree that links all the way to the sky in traditional Chinese painting style”. I absolutely love Pic 2 and 4!! How about you?

👍 Pros:

• It provides an endless supply of unique and imaginative imagery that would be difficult or time-consuming to create manually.
• It allows designers to explore new creative avenues and push the boundaries of what is possible.
• It is a free tool provided by OpenAI.

🧐 Cons:

• It is still in its early stages and may not yet be suitable for commercial use.
• The quality of the generated images can vary and may not always meet the desired standards.

💰 Price:

DALL·E 2 is a free tool provided by OpenAI.

Tool 2. StockimgAI

Link: https://stokimgai.com/

StokimgAI is an AI-powered tool that can generate custom stock images based on text descriptions. The difference with this platform is you can pick the category you would like to generate (e.g. Book cover, poster, logo etc)

👍 Pros:

• I love the idea of providing a range of design services that people may mostly need.
• You can start with a free plan to try it out.

🧐 Cons:

• As to logo generation, it is not that idea. The style is mostly like the images below, which is not that ideal for people who want a simple and modern style.

• If you are with the free plan, you can only get 1 free image.

💰 Price:

Tool 3: Photosonic

Link: https://photosonic.writesonic.com/

Photosonic is a web-based tool that lets you create realistic or artistic images from any text description, using a state-of-the-art text-to-image AI model.
The model is based on latent diffusion, a process that gradually transforms a random noise image into a coherent image that matches the text. You can control the quality, diversity, and style of the generated images by adjusting the description and rerunning the model.

👍 Pros:

1. I like the function of giving the art categories since sometimes we are not sure what categories are out there.
2. You can start with a free plan to try it out.

🧐 Cons:

I gave it a quite challenging prompt, which was a weird dream I had before. And apparently I broke the system 🤣 The images it generated are not that impressive.

💰 Price:

Tool 4: AutoDraw

Link: https://www.autodraw.com/

Google has recently presented its latest AI web-based experiment called AutoDraw which can turn rough drawings into amazing icons/clipart and you can download the final result for free. You can run the app on your phone or tablet to get a polished symbol or icon instead of your doodle.

👍 Pros:

1. All the icons are in the same style and weight. As a designer we can easily create our own set of icons by drawing here.
2. It is for FREE!!

🧐 Cons:

1. Well, if you are not good at drawing, then it is gonna be a hard one for you.
2. It does not support svg file
3. Sometimes the icons you need are not in their library. It might be easier to just search for it.

I have to admit that I tried to use ChatGPT to generate this article. But it just does not work. It even gave me some non-existing URLs for the AI tools above and made up some functions that the above tools don’t have. Even if ChatGPT has the basic fact correct, it will still not be able to summarise pros and cons as well as someone who actually tried those tools. So I have faith in us!

To read more, you can find me on Instagram or Linkedin.

I am Dana, thank you so much for reading. I will see you next time.