Flux keeps growing. Someone now offers it for free.

Good day, humans.

In today’s Newsletter:

• Flux is everywhere. And now, free.

• Ideogram isn’t far behind: Version 2.0 is out.

• It doesn’t stop: Something “mystical” is coming.

• Hedra Labs turns you into an animated character.

• Use this Midjourney style

Let’s get started.

Flux is everywhere. And now, free.

A month ago, Midjourney was the undisputed king of AI art generation. And now, everything has changed. The arrival of Black Forest Labs' Flux model has been an earthquake: It offers realistic capabilities on par with Midjourney. Additionally, being an open model, it has been adapted by many companies needing to offer this service.

From Grok-2 on the X platform to Freepik, many paid options now exist to use Flux. Now, Krea AI offers the product for free.

How to use it

1. Enter the Krea AI app and create an account.

2. Go to the Flux module.

3. Enter the description of the image you want.

To test the tool, this was the prompt I used:

Ideogram isn’t far behind: Version 2.0 is out.

This week, Ideogram released version 2.0 of its text-to-image AI model. It’s now available for free on their website and in a new iOS app, along with a beta API for developers.

Why it’s important

The new version of Ideogram is strong enough to compete with Midjourney and Flux. Ideogram’s specialty is the “Design” mode, focused on precision in generating images with text.

It doesn’t stop: Something “mystical” is coming.

Freepik and Magnific have been sharing examples of yet another (!) image generation model called Mystic. The examples shared on social media are quite good, and it’s expected to be open to users next week. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Hedra Labs turns you into an animated character.

Hedra Labs now presents Character-1.5, an improved version of its model that allows you to create stylized avatars without the need for coding.

How it works

1. You use a photo of yourself as a base.

2. You write a prompt to transform it into a unique character, be it Mr. Potato Head or a cyberpunk ninja.

3. There’s also a stylization tool with fun presets, like turning yourself into a marble statue, an anime character, or a Renaissance painting.

4. Finally, you can upload your own audio or generate one, and your character will automatically lip-sync with the audio or text.

Use this Midjourney style

To generate images in this style, add the parameter --sref 2837013301 at the end of your prompts. Example:

Photographic portrait --sref 2837013301

Thanks for reading.

See you next week! Hi 👋 I’m Erik Knobl, a Product Designer by day and a Generative AI explorer on weekends. I share my learnings in this newsletter. Consider subscribing to stay in touch.