Google Gemini’s new AI image generator just rolled out to everyone for free – with one annoying limitation

Imagen 3 is rolling out worldwide

News By Graham Barlow published 10 October 2024

Google's AI image generator Imagen 3 is now available to all Gemini users on mobile or desktop, for free. So, if you ask Gemini to create an image for you it will now use Imagen 3 by default, even on the free tier, but there’s one annoying limitation.

Google calls Imagen 3 its highest-quality image generation model yet and claims it’s better at following your instructions and produces fewer visual artifacts than its previous models. However, there is one annoying limitation – if you want to generate images of people you need to be a Gemini Advanced customer. Gemini Advanced costs $19.99 (£18.99, AU$32.99) a month and comes as part of the Google One AI Premium Plan that includes 2TB of storage and Gemini in Google Docs.

How Imagen 3 works

Unlike some other AI image generators, Imagen works by generating just one image from each prompt. You can refine the image by requesting changes, so it remembers what you asked for previously, but a new image is generated for every prompt you enter.

If you like the preview you see you can download the image and you’ll get a 2048 x 2048 resolution JPEG. You can download as many images as you like because there’s no specific daily limit for image creation, even on the free tier. The main restriction, of course, is that you can’t create images of people. Animals however aren't a problem. Of course, once you upgrade to Gemini Advanced you can create as many images of people as you like.

Imagen 3 has a range of features that are worth exploring. For example, you can ask it to create photorealistic landscapes, richly textured oil paintings, or even claymation scenes.

Google is very proud of Imagen 3's great text rendering capabilities. So, if you ask it to create a comic book panel with a speech bubble coming from one of the characters, the text should be readable. However, we found that it still had some work to do in this area. For example, the prompt "create an image of a panel from a 1950s sci-fi comic where a man and woman look out at a futuristic city and a speech bubble from the man says "I never thought Mars would have such a great atmosphere", generated this unfortunate image:

You can also ask it to create words made out of other shapes, or carved into buildings and it should look realistic. All these improved features mean that Imagen 3 is going to deserve a place amongst the best AI image generators.

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