Not that the world is lacking in AI image generators - in addition to the best-known representatives such as Midjourney, Dall-E, Stable Diffusion or Firefly, there are countless offshoots and services that are hard to keep track of.
It is therefore hardly surprising that the new image generator from Meta is no longer even worth a mention on many news sites. But "Imagine" does have one major advantage over most current services: you don't need your own GPU, nor do you have to install anything. There is also no need to own or purchase credits or even take out a subscription.
Facebook Messenger users have reportedly been able to generate images with artificial intelligence for quite some time. A simple command line command "/imagine" can be followed by a prompt and the messenger generates an AI image according to these specifications.
But now Meta is giving its image generator Emu
which is also available for videos in the Lab its own simple web interface outside the Meta Messanger.
Meta AI image generator - free of charge, but currently only for the USA
Using stand-alone URL imagine.meta.com, prompts can now be easily converted into images, just like with Adobe's Firefly.
However, the web interface is not really open with Meta either, as it requires further registration with the company, which is not unknown for its data collection activities. And this registration in turn checks whether you are based in the USA. This is because Meta currently only wants to make its service available for North America.
If you want to try Imagine "for free", you should therefore also be familiar with VPNs and similar technologies. Or simply be patient a little longer, as we can expect to see and experience many more services of this kind in the coming months.
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