Craiyon Review to Generate AI Art
There are so many reasons you might want to use an AI image generator. Craiyon AI is one option you can find online.
Craiyon has two benefits: it's free, and you can generate unlimited images. It's also owned by Open AI, which is a popular and powerful AI company.
Unfortunately, the quality of those images leaves a lot to be desired. Craiyon generates images that look slightly funky, with a lot of the typical bad AI art hallmarks like weird hands, off teeth, and wacky compositions.
My one sentence summary of this AI image generator? It's a great toy, but not a great tool (yet).
In this article, I'll break down:
What Craiyon AI is
How it works
How you can use Craiyon AI as an image generator
Key features of Craiyon art generator
Craiyon AI pricing
Pros and cons
Alternative AI image generators you can use
What is Craiyon AI?
Back in 2022, Dall e mini (or Dalle mini)was one of the first AI art generator options to cause a big stir online. Everyone was using it to generate fun images. As it got more popular, the creators spun out their free tool into Craiyon.
Craiyon AI is an AI image generator trained on the Google PU Research Cloud. You input a plain text prompt, like “social network woman” and Craiyon AI gives you nine images within about a minute of work.
I have not seen AI art this bad since 2022.
It's a free service, but you do have the option of a paid subscription for faster results, and they also have ads.
It was one of the first generative AI models out there, and inspired a slew of copycat AI art generators.
How does this image generation tool work?
In simple words, it is a blender of images. It's eaten tons of art, and when you say, “Give me a cat going to the moon,” it will pull together something from all the training image sets it's used.
Cute, if somewhat concerning anatomy of cats
To give more context, it works by using artificial intelligence. Craiyon AI was trained on a body of images, all tagged with specific text. When you git it a prompt, it uses a slurry of image inputs to give you a few options that are a mashup of its training data.
Craiyon AI uses a deep neural network, a type of machine learning algorithm that can recognize patterns in data and make predictions based on those patterns.
How do you use Craiyon?
It could not be simpler to use this image generator.
Go to Craiyon.com.
Input a text prompt.
Wait 1-2 minutes
Laugh at your nine silly results. (They will never be realistic images.)
There are a few hidden tools that not many other creators know about.
For example, to share your AI art with your friends, use the “screenshot” tool to instantly get a quick and clean snapshot of all your images.
You can also add an artist name to get results in the art style of that artist, for example: “social network woman” + “picasso”
For moral purposes, I recommend only using those whose art is available publicly, and never using this image generator to avoid paying a small indie artist for their work.
Finally, you can always see how much time it's spent on the top right corner, which counts the seconds since you hit “enter” on your image prompt.
Key features of Craiyon
Compared to tools like Starry AI, Jasper art, Midjourney, and Deep Dream generator, Craiyon is a very simple artificial intelligence tool.
Its key features are that it always generates give your a nine-image set, and that those will mostly be silly images rather than anything you can use professionally.
You can also select a style, choosing from art, drawing, photo, or none. You can also add “negative” words if you’d prefer not to see certain elements, like people, buildings, or anything else.
As an image creator, it's subpar at best. It can't produce photorealistic images, and it's not as good at mocking artwork style as other AI image generation tools.
I would not like to see the woman that inspired these “photorealistic” pics.
It's not the best AI art generator, but it has useful features.
Craiyon AI pricing
One of the best things about Craiyon is that it's free forever, as far as I can tell. Unlike its competitors, there's no cap on image number. You can make as much AI generated art as you want with this AI art generator.
You can choose to upgrade to one of two paid plans, if you want better features.
You can pay $60/year or $6/month to be on the Supporter Tier. This gets you access to:
A slightly faster image creation time (45 seconds compared to 1-2 minutes)
Private AI art generation.Coming soon, images generated by free tier users will be (anonymously) searchable.
No watermark or ads on images.
This tier is best for those who like what Craiyon is doing and want to help support their mission.
The next tier up is the Professional tier, coming in at $240/year or $24/month. This comes with:
15 second wait time for 9 AI generated images
Early access to new features
This tier is best for anyone who needs to generate a lot of images very quickly.
I did notice that paying money does not give you access to a better style of images, so keep that in mind.
Pros and cons of Craiyon
What I liked about Craiyon's AI tool:
It's free.
It's extremely user friendly.
There are no limits on how many nine-image sets you can generate.
What I didn't like about Craiyon's tool:
It's not very good.
The 1-2 minute delay can be frustrating, especially if you want to tinker with the style or the AI model image results.
That's why I'd recommend using a Craiyon alternative if you're serious about creating a solid AI image.
Craiyon Alternatives and Competitors
If you want an AI generator that creates more specific or high quality images, here are some options to investigate.
Midjourney
This tool is top of my list for the simple reason that it can make an AI generated image in almost any wide range of styles, quite quickly, and of high quality.
It's simple to use: join the Discord, go to one of the newbie rooms, type in /imagine, and let your creativity run wild. Typically, the longer the text description, the better the image.
I also love to browse what the Midjourney Bot creates, as well as the artwork of other users.
Dream Studio
This is a slightly more complex alternative, so it's better suited t more advanced AI users. However, it can make truly beautiful artwork if you know what you're doing.
If you're a true expert, you can work with Stable Diffusion, the open-source image generator. This is free forever, though slightly tricky to get set up.
Lensa AI
This tool was extremely popular in December 2022. You could feed the image generator a set of your selfies and give it a style to choose from. It would then generate gorgeous, interesting portraits that you could use for profile pictures.
It cost a few bucks.
Jasper AI
This tool is more commonly used for text generation, rather than art, but it still works OK for art.
The main drawback is the price. The lowest tier is $24 a month, and I don't think the tool is good enough to justify that price point.
Hire someone who works in graphic design
As always, one of the best ways to get digital art that suits your needs is to work with a human, not a bot.
Final thoughts on Craiyon
I think AI is here to stay. TikTok, one of the fastest-growing apps ever, reached 100 million users within three years. By contrast, ChatGPT reached 100 million users two months after launch, setting a record.
The adoption and profligate use means AI generation is here to stay, whether for images or text.
As one of the first image generators, Craiyon has a special, nostalgic place in my heart. But it's not a great tool compared to the power of the alternatives.
I recommend using it for fun. For serious AI image generation, Midjourney and Dream Studio are better options.