[Music] okay let's talk about something super exciting and honestly a little bit terrifying in the world of AI if you've been following the AI image generation scene for a while you know we've had some big players dominating the space mid Journey Dolly stable diffusion but guess what a fresh Contender has arrived and it goes by the name flux and trust me you're going to want to know about this one so where do we start let's kick things off with a little background on what's been going on in the AI world you see for the last
last couple of years we've seen a massive boom in AI generated art tools like Adobe Firefly mid Journey do e and stable diffusion have been battling it out to be the top dog each one pushing the boundaries with their updates but now something new has entered the ring and it's got everyone talking all right let me paint you a picture you're scrolling through your social media feed and you come across an image that looks so real you'd swear it was a photograph but then you'd do a double take Maybe maybe it's the way the text
on a lanyard looks a little funky or the patterns in the background seem a bit off that's when you realize you're not looking at a photo you're looking at an AI generated image and this thing is as close to real as it gets without actually being real that's flux for you and it's causing quite a stir so flux is an open- Source AI image generator that's being developed by a company called Black Forest Labs if that name doesn't ring a bell maybe the fact that some of the folks behind it used to work at at
stability AI will yep that's the same crew responsible for stable diffusion which as you know is a pretty big deal in the AI art world the company is also working on a text to video model that it promises will offer highquality output and be available open source branding it state-of-the-art text to video for all now since the startup recently secured $31 million in a financing round with backing from well-known Tech investor andrees Horowitz it's clear they're on solid footing according to their homepage under the what's next section their upcoming model will be called soda and
it's set to be available to everyone meanwhile open eyes video generator Sora has been around for 6 months but is still only accessible to a select group of testers now let's talk about what makes flux so special first off it's open source which means the code is out there for anyone to Tinker with modify and integrate into their own projects it gives a ton of flexibility to developers hobbyists and even small businesses who might not have the resources to invest in more expensive proprietary tools like mid Journey but there are actually three different versions of
flux the first one is the pro version which is geared towards commercial use this is the big boy the model that's meant for companies that want to incorporate highquality AI image generation into their products or Services then there's the dev version which is a midweight model it's sort of the middle ground still powerful but not quite as heavy duty as the pro version and lastly there's the Schnell version Schnell means fast in German by the way which is fitting because this version is all about speed it takes like 2 or 3 seconds for this model
to generate an image which is pretty crazy it's the lightweight fast- performing model that's great for those who want quick results without needing a super beefy machine to run it speaking of running it here's another thing that sets flux apart from its competition it can run on some pretty modest Hardware like if you've got a decently powerful laptop you're good to go you don't need a supercomputer or a cloud service to get this thing up and running that's a big deal because it makes high quality AI image generation accessible to a much wider audience when
we talk about realism flux stands out as a clear leader as I mentioned before the images it creates are so lifelike it's hard to believe they're AI generated in fact some people are saying that flux might just be the new king of photo realism especially when you combine it with something called Laura Laura is a fine-tuning script developed by a group called exlab and when you pair it with flux the results are nothing short of mindblowing we're talking about images that are so detailed so accurate that you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart from
real photos at least at first glance but and there's always a but it's not perfect if you really start to scrutinize these images you'll notice some telltale signs that their AI generated text is a big giveaway flux still struggles with rendering small text accurately so if you see something like a lanyard or a sign in the background the text might look a little off patterns and textures can also get a bit wonky and sometimes elements in the image are just slightly out of proportion it's nothing that ruins the image outright but if you're looking for
it you'll spot it and then there's the issue of skin textures as good as flux is at rendering people it sometimes falls short when it comes to making skin look natural it actually makes the skin looking better than in reality you might notice that it can appear a bit too smooth which breaks the illusion of real ISM it's something that mid Journey especially in its latest versions seems to handle a bit better but here's the thing despite these minor imperfections the images that flux produces are going viral and it's not hard to see why the
level of realism it achieves is stunning and it's got people buzzing about the potential uses for this technology think about it stock photography advertising social media content there's a huge market for realistic images and flux could be a GameChanger in that space But as awesome as it is to be able to create hyper realistic images with just a few clicks there's also a darker side to this technology we're already seeing concerns about how AI generated images could be used to create fake news commit scams or spread misinformation the more realistic these images become the harder
it's going to be to tell what's real and what's not that's a pretty scary thought and it's something that we're going to have to Grapple with as AI technology continues to evolve but let's not get too bogged down in the Doom and Gloom just yet there's still a lot to to be excited about with flux especially if you're someone who likes to experiment with new tech if you're curious about trying it out for yourself you've got a few options if you've got a decent laptop something with a good GPU you can actually download and run
flux locally there's a launcher called Pinocchio that makes it super easy to get set up it's a big file so it might take a while to download but once you've got it you can start generating images right on your own machine no need to rely on cloud services or internet access but if if your computer isn't up to the task don't worry there are plenty of online platforms that have already integrated flux into their offerings for example night Cafe which is one of the more popular AI image platforms out there has added flux to its
lineup this means you can generate images using flux and compare them directly with images from other models like ideogram and stable diffusion 3 it's a great way to see how flux Stacks up against the competition in real time another platform that's jumped on the flux bandwagon is po if you're you're not familiar with po it's an AI model platform that lets you generate images in a chatbot style format kind of like how you would with chat GPT and do e it's a different approach but it's cool to see how flux performs in that kind of
environment and if you're a developer there are even more options flux is available on platforms like Bas Labs hugging face and fou ey which are more geared towards folks who want to dive into the technical side of things free pick one of the biggest names in stock photography is is also working to bring flux to its site so keep an eye out for that so flux is definitely a model to watch it's got the potential to shake up the AI image generation scene in a big way and it's already proving to be a serious Contender
to establish names like mid journey and stable diffusion all right if you found this video helpful or interesting don't forget to smash that like button hit subscribe and ring the bell so you don't miss any of my future videos and hey drop a comment below if you've tried flux yourself or if you have any thoughts on the whole AI image generation scene I'd love to hear what you guys think thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one
