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Generative AI is changing the game for content creators, making it easier than ever to produce high-quality visuals, videos, and music effortlessly. No longer limited to just text-based tools, AI is now an essential asset for marketers looking to streamline their workflow and create engaging content at scale.
With AI-powered tools, brands can generate professional-grade assets in a fraction of the time, reducing the complexity of traditional content production. Whether it’s designing eye-catching graphics, personalising campaigns for different audiences, or experimenting with new formats, AI helps marketers stay agile and ahead of trends. By automating creative processes, businesses can launch campaigns faster, maintain a consistent brand presence, and maximise engagement across multiple platforms, without breaking the budget.
Struggling to find images for your blog, website, and slide decks? AI photo generators can be a great solution. In this blog, we’ve gathered the best AI photo generators available, both free and paid, to meet all your marketing needs.
Best Free AI Photo Generators
If you’re operating on a tight marketing budget, finding quick and free sources for high-quality images is essential. Here, we’ve compiled some of the top AI photo generators available at no cost. These tools are fast, reliable, and user-friendly.
Adobe Firefly
Adobe Firefly offers AI-powered text-to-image, text-to-video, text-to audio generation for content creation, which is a fantastic feature for marketers and designers. The platform is easy to navigate and straightforward to use. Unlike some other AI photo generators for marketing, you can see the settings, the generated images, and the prompt all at once, making it easier to refine outputs for high-quality AI-generated visuals. This is especially useful when you’re creating custom AI-generated assets for social media, blogs, and digital marketing campaigns.
There is a free AI image generation tier with a limited number of monthly credits, making it accessible for basic use. However, you can unlock access to more AI-generated assets and advanced design tools with a subscription to Adobe Firefly or the Adobe Creative Suite.
OpenArt
OpenArt offers a free version and multiple subscription tiers which allows you to easily generate AI photos from detailed prompts. One of its standout features is the quick-start style selection, which lets you add a photo to choose a specific aesthetic from the start. This helps to save time and minimises the need for repetitive prompt adjustments.
Image Creator from Microsoft Designer
Microsoft Designer is an intuitive and user-friendly generative AI tool that enables users to create visually appealing designs effortlessly. If you’re unsure about what to create, simply click the “Surprise Me” button, which generates a prompt for you, providing inspiration and sparking your creativity. You can also apply brand guidelines to ensure all designs align with your company’s visual identity, keeping a cohesive look across all assets. This free generative AI feature allows unlimited image generation, perfect for those looking to explore new ideas and streamline their design process.
ImageFX by Google
Google’s ImageFX offers users a completely free way to generate text-to-image assets for marketing purposes. The images are highly realistic and accurate to the text. It has a helpful recommended options feature to enhance your prompts, guiding the output with styles like 35mm film, photorealistic, and highly-detailed.
Best Subscription AI Photo Generators
DALL-E 3
DALL·E 3 is OpenAI’s advanced image generator, designed to create high-quality, highly detailed visuals. Available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers, it serves as both a brainstorming partner and a refinement tool, helping users craft precise prompts for more accurate results.
This latest version offers improved text-to-image alignment, ensuring that generated visuals closely match the given descriptions. It also delivers enhanced image quality, making it easier to create unique, professional-grade visuals for marketing, branding, content creation, and beyond. You have the commerical usage rights over the images you create, meaning you don’t need permission to reprint or sell them.
Canva Pro
Canva is a powerful design tool, perfect for marketers who may not have a background in graphic design but still need to edit images or create quick, professional-looking graphics. It allows access to advanced design features which can be used for commercial and personal projects without additional licensing fees. Canva brings together design, such as resizing, background removal and editing options, with AI tools.
Photo Room
PhotoRoom is a powerful editing tool packed with AI-driven features, including text-to-image generation, automated background removal, object removal, and resizing. While PhotoRoom offers free tools, advanced features like the AI background generator and text-to-image creation are available with a subscription. One of its standout features is its ability to enhance product photography. With AI-powered background removal, replacement, and manipulation, you can create polished, professional-looking product images. It even allows you to place text behind objects for a more dynamic design. Plus, PhotoRoom’s AI ensures that generated backgrounds match the angle, lighting, and shadows of your original product photo, making edits look seamless and natural.
Dream Studio
Dream Studio’s Stability AI, powered by Stable Diffusion, is a versatile tool for generating and editing images. Its DreamStudio interface offers both a prompt field to describe what you want and a negative prompt field to specify what you want to avoid—an essential feature for fine-tuning results.
DreamStudio operates on a usage-based pricing model, providing a few free credits to start, but no full free tier. Users can generate up to 10 images per prompt, offering flexibility in exploring different variations before committing to additional usage fees.
Which Generative AI Tool Will You Try?
With so many powerful generative AI tools available, finding the right one for your brand comes down to testing and exploring their unique features. However, it’s important to be mindful of the potential downsides that come with relying too heavily on AI.
Artificial Appearance
AI-generated visuals can sometimes appear noticeably fake or unnatural, particularly when attempting to create realistic human features. Common errors include hands and feet with incorrect numbers of fingers or toes, distorted proportions, or awkward positioning. These flaws can make content feel unprofessional and diminish its impact. While AI tools can be useful for generating ideas and filling visual gaps, they often lack the refinement and precision that human designers provide.
Pros and Cons of AI-Generated Images
Pros:
- Speed and Efficiency: AI tools can quickly generate visuals, making them ideal for brainstorming sessions, rapid prototyping, or meeting tight deadlines.
- Cost-Effective: For smaller businesses with limited budgets, AI offers an affordable solution to create compelling visuals without hiring a designer for every project.
- Inspiration and Idea Generation: AI can help creatives overcome creative blocks by producing fresh concepts that may not have been initially considered.
Cons:
- Lack of Uniqueness: AI-generated content often lacks the distinctive style and authenticity that professional designers bring. Overuse may result in visuals that feel generic or fail to align with your brand identity.
- Over-Reliance Risks: Relying heavily on AI tools may limit creative thinking, preventing teams from exploring unique design solutions.
- Potential Backlash: Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of AI-generated content. Overuse can feel impersonal or inauthentic, which may impact trust and engagement.
- Copyright and Ethical Concerns: AI image generators can unintentionally reproduce copyrighted content or infringe on artistic styles, raising ethical issues.
Striking the Right Balance
AI tools are excellent for enhancing efficiency, sparking ideas, and tackling smaller design tasks. Whether you need AI-powered image editing, high-quality stock photos, or creative text-to-image generation, these tools can streamline your content creation process. Just be sure to review the final images carefully for any spelling errors, inconsistencies, or unexpected distortions before using them in your marketing materials.
However, they shouldn’t replace the invaluable skills of experienced designers. We recommended testing out different tools and using them for idea inspiration and quick content creation rather than as a substitute for strategic design work. Ultimately, people connect with brands that tell a story, and no algorithm can replace the emotional depth and originality that human designers bring to the table. If you need design support, check out our services page and let’s talk to see how we can help your business.