Seven DALL-E alternatives you can use today, with examples

Dall-E is a neural network(an Artificial Intelligence technology) that can generate images from text inputs in natural language.

If you are one of those people who don’t have access to DALL-E, you can check out some alternatives below.

In this article, I cover below DALL-E alternatives.

• DALL-E Mini
  • Use Dall-E Mini from HuggingFace Website
  • Use DALL-E Mini from Craiyon website
  • Use Dall-E Mini Playground on the web
  • Install Dall-E Mini Playground on your computer
  • Install Dall-E Mini Playground and backend on your computer
• Midjourney AI
• Stable Diffusion AI

Let’s go through them one by one

Use Dall-E from HuggingFace Website without installing anything

Skill Level: Beginner

1. Open HuggingFace Dall-E Application
2. Enter a prompt and press generate your images

That’s it. This is the easiest way to use open source Dall-E currently.

However, if you are running into “too much traffic” error with Dall e mini, use one of the below methods to keep using dall e for generating images.

Use Craiyon to generate images from prompts

Skill Level: Beginner

1. Open https://www.craiyon.com/
2. Enter your prompt and press generate your images

The below methods require some experience with web development and is suitable for people who are used to building web applications. You can also use the below methods to build your own AI image generator.

Use Dall-E Playground without installing anything

Skill Level: Intermediate

For this method, it helps if you know your way around Google Colab.

There are two main parts of having DALL-E Playground running on your computer:

1. DALL-E backend
2. DALL-E Playground or DALL-E Web App

The below steps cover both of them.

Get the DALL-E backend up and running on Google Colab

1. Open Dall-e backend notebook in Google Colab
2. Click on Runtime menu and click on Run all
3. Once finished, get the link from the bottom of the Google Colab notebook. It should look like this: `https://xxxxxx.loca.lt)
   If you run into problems, try selecting a different model.

Get DALL-E Playground in your browser

1. Open the Dall e Playground in your browser
2. Input the url from the backend setup
3. Enter your prompt and click enter to generate your DALL-E images

Install Dall-E Playground on your computer

Skill Level: Intermediate

For this method, it helps if you know your way around the command line terminal.

Let’s set up the backend first.

1. Open Dall-e backend notebook in Google Colab
2. Click on Runtime menu and click on Run all
3. Once finished, get the link from the bottom of the Google Colab notebook. It should look like this: https://xxxxxx.loca.lt
   If you run into problems, try selecting a different model.

Now, time to install the Dall-E Playground frontend application

1. Open your terminal
2. get the code for the open source Dall-E Playground by running the following command:
   git clone https://github.com/saharmor/dalle-playground.git
   If it says git: command not found, you need to install git on your computer. Here is a guide to installing git.
3. cd to the directory you just cloned
4. cd to the interface directory
5. run below command
   npm install
   This installs the required node modules.
6. If everything goes well, so far, start the Dall-E Playground by running the following command:
   npm start
   by default this will start the playground on port 3000
7. Open your browser and visit – http://localhost:3000
8. Input the url from the Google colab.
9. enter your prompt and click enter to generate your dall e images

Install Dall-E Playground and backend on your computer

Skill Level: Advanced

In this method, it helps if you know your way around using the command line and can install python packages.

Also, you need to have a computer or virtual machine that has a GPU attached.

As in previous methods, you need to have a backend and a frontend running. The difference in this method is both the backend and the frontend are running on your computer.

The steps to install the front-end web application are the same as in the previous method. We will just cover the backend installation.

DALL-E backend installation:

1. Open your terminal
2. get the code for the open source Dall-E backend code by running the following command:
   git clone https://github.com/saharmor/dalle-playground.git
   If it says git: command not found, you need to install git on your computer. Here is a guide to installing git.
3. cd to the directory you just cloned above
4. cd to the backend directory
5. Install required python packages by running the following command:
   ‘pip install -r requirements.txt’
6. Run the backend server by running the following command:
   ‘python app.py –port 8000 –model_version mini’
   If everything goes well, your Dall-E backend is running on http://localhost:8000/.

You can now use the above URL in the Dall-E Playground you set up earlier.

Midjourney AI

Midjourney is another DALL-E alternative for generating AI art. Here is some of the AI art from their public feed.

In order to use Midjourney, you need to join their discord server where you can generate AI art by sending prompts as Discord chat commands. All your image generations are public unless you are on the enterprise plan. They also have a running feed of user-generated images that you can view along with the text prompt that generated that particular image.

Midjourney is a paid service and its plans are as below:

• Basic Plan – Monthly $10 with 200 image generations
• Standard Plan – Monthly $30 with unlimited generations
• Enterprise Plan – Annual plan of $600 USD with unlimited private generations

Stable Diffusion

Stable Diffusion is an Open Source and free AI image generation model and tool. In order to use Stable Diffusion, you need to be invited to be their private Discord server. Currently, the invites are limited but they are quickly ramping up.

they also have plans to release the code for their AI model as open-source which will enable anyone with enough GPU resources to run this on their own machines.

Some users who have gotten early access, including the author of this article, have found Stable Diffusion to be of higher quality than others including DALL-E in generating a certain type of images, especially around AI with complex features.

Conclusion

Generating art using AI is very exciting and fun. Dall-E is a great way to generate art using AI. More and more AI models are being released that can generate high-quality images from text.