Black Forest Labs has released a new AI-powered image-generating tool that has gone viral on social media, particularly Twitter (X). Users have rated the Flux. 1 AI image generator higher than MidJourney on Artificial Analysis where users are asked to rate images in a blind test from different AI image generators. So is it that good? Everything you need to know.
What Is Flux. 1
It is an open-sourced AI image generator (available on GitHub) that is free to use. Launched on August 1, it was developed by Black Forest Labs which is based out of Germany. You can install it on your machine locally which will require top specs or use it via some third-party sites that have installed it on their servers. Innterestingly, Flux. 1 model is also being used by Grok, X’s residence AI chatbot. That means you can now generate photorealistic images using text prompts on Grok using Flux. 1 but the feature is restrictred to X’s premium users only.
Why Flux. 1 Is Going Viral
You must have seen those weird AI generated images of men and women with 6 fingers? That’s because it is incredibly difficult to get human texture, form, skin, etc. right. Though a lot of advancements have been made in that direction, it seems Flux. 1 has solved the problem to a large extent. Here are some examples of people who are giving a TedX talk on-stage.
MidJourney and Dall-E 3 were reigning supreme for some time as the default text to image generators for some time now. But now, the users are voting with their fingers. Literally.
Users are Voting for It
Flux. 1 is able to generate images of humans and animals in great detail, getting the texture, skin, body, and form right. In fact, users have rated Flux. 1 AI image generator above the likes of MidJourney, Dalle 3, and Stable Diffusion in a blind test performed by Artificial Analysis. You can take that test too. Simply select the image that you think does justice to the text prompt shown at the top. Upon selecting an image, the tool will tell you which model was used to generate the image and then you will see another pair of generated images.
I took the test myself and increasingly found that I was choosing images generated by Flux. 1 over other models more often that not. Flux. 1 works well and the generated images consistently rendered photorealistic human features with details accurately that are hard to get right. For example, human skin traits like wrinkles and spots, hair, and even eyes.
A quick look at the leaderboard shows Flux. 1 leading the charts closely followed by MidJourney. The latter wins in terms of customizations and options but Flux. 1, espeically the Pro version, wins in photorealism. Flux. 1 is available in three versions – Flux. 1 [dev] and Flux. 1 [schnell] are free for the community while the Pro is paid and aimed at professionals, influencers, and enterprise users who want a commercial license. On the other hand, MidJourney offers limited credits after which you need to subscribe to a plan.
Here is a complete list of models that are used in the test to generate images: DALLE 3, DALLE 2, DALLE 3 HD, Stable Diffusion 3 Large, Stable Diffusion 2.1, Stable Diffusion 3 Large Turbo, Stable Diffusion XL 1.0, SDXL Lightning, Stable Diffusion 1.6, Midjourney v6, Playground v2.5, Midjourney v6.1, Stable Diffusion 1.5, Amazon Titan G1 (Standard), Stable Diffusion 3 Medium, Amazon Titan G1 v2 (Standard), FLUX.1 [pro], FLUX.1 [dev], FLUX.1 [schnell]. That’s a long list. How many have you tried so far?
Notably, Flux. 1 was developed by AI engineers who were earlier working at Stability.AI who developed Stable Diffusion. They are now working on a text to video generator with some advanced editing options to cater to the creators. I can’t wait to test it out. Meanwhile, you can try these 5 AI image generating apps to better compare not just the generated images but also features that these apps offer.
