Last year, there was a surge in interest in artificial intelligence (AI) in our art community, and the trend has continued until now.

I was one of the users who received an invitation to the OpenAI DALL-E 2 in July last year. Nowadays, there are A LOT of AI art generators popping up in the market, and you might be wondering which tool to choose from.

I've tried many anime art AI generator platforms and had a chance to implement AI into my art workflow. Hence, in this blog post, you'll get my best anime AI art generator list!

This blog post consist of a list of interesting AI platforms that I've tested, and I think it'll be beneficial for you since we're anime artists and we have similar art styles. Plus I've updated this article to give you the latest information and new list of interesting AI.

You can use them to generate references for your drawing ideas or use the generated images for photo bashing! (Don't forget to check their term of use before using the AI for commercial works)

What is AI art generator?

An AI art generator is a computer program that creates art using artificial intelligence. It creates artwork in a similar way to how the human brain works.

When an artist makes an artwork, they do so with an idea and tools.

The AI art generator does the same thing, but using algorithms instead of creative thought.

The algorithms will generate images or videos based on input from the user, or by using machine learning to create art based on data sets. You just need to input your text prompt mentioning the art style you want or you can upload a photo and let the AI generate a series from it.

To make the most of AI capabilities, you may utilize their created images as references to stimulate your creativity, or you can use them to do a paint over, photo bashing, or matte painting with your artwork, depending on the terms of use of each AI developer.

You can even train your own AI model with your artwork or any images using Stable Diffusion for free, but it'll need a little bit of learning. However, in this blog post, I'll focus on the online AI platform, which is easy to use.

There are a number of AI art generators available, each with its own unique capabilities and features. For example, there's an AI art generator that can create images based on textual descriptions, another that can turn photographs into anime-style paintings, and even one that can generate 3D models from text.

Here is a list of some of the most interesting AI art generators that you should try if you're anime artist!:

SoulGen

Generate both anime and realistic girls characters with AI

SoulGen is an AI-based image generator. You can freely design the image of your girl character, including in both anime and real-life styles. The highlight of SoulGen is that it focuses on the special scenario of human body generation by learning from billions of images on the Internet to generate realistic images.

SoulGen uses a deep learning algorithm that has been trained on a massive dataset of images to create unique and authentic portraits of girls. The algorithm is constantly learning and improving, which means that the images generated by SoulGen are always evolving and getting better.

SoulGen allows you to create images of anime girls and realistic girls from text and tags. You can simply input text prompts or choose the built-in tags to customize the appearance of generated girls, including hairstyles, body shapes, clothing, skin tones, gestures, face shapes, accessories, etc. Try “beautiful ladies in uniform”, “red-haired girl in kimono”, etc. as prompts and see what you'll get!

The image quality you get from SoulGen is quite impressive and outstanding. If you're a pro user, you'll be able to batch generate the images up to 4-9 images in a row.

Because of the user-friendly and intuitive user interface, SoulGen doesn't require you to have any technical skills or knowledge of AI. The interface is super simple to navigate. All you need to do is enter a paragraph of text, and then you'll get the high quality girl character in just a sec.

Recently, they have added a new function where you can do “inpainting” with your images. Now you can change the color and design of a specific part of the character. For example, you can change the character's clothes from a t-shirt to a bikini or change the character's eye color with a single click.

Below is an example. I changed the character's eye color. Just mask the area where you want to change the design and give it your prompt, and that's all!

SoulGen is a game-changer for anyone who needs high-quality images of anime girls characters and also realistic style girls. And you may try SoulGen with up to 50% off on the first subscription.

Novel AI

The powerful anime-style image generator in 2023

Novel AI is one of the market's powerful AI for generating anime-style images based on Stable Diffusion. At first, Novel AI only has an AI function to help you with the novel writing but they've just launched their image generation recently.

I've tested a lot of AI platforms, and Novel AI produces the great quality in anime style. I experimented with generating character illustrations, character design sheets, background illustrations, and so on. This is the most effective tool to date. You can see its potential in these images, which I tried generating using Novel AI.

Here is the test with the character design sheet. To be honest, it did really well and already blew my mind.

I recently experimented with modifying the prompt to generate character design sheets in a variety of styles. It was a lot of fun, and I think I'll use it for character design inspiration in the future. You can see the collection I've created here. If you're interested to generate your own images, you may access my free anime girl NovelAI prompt guide here.

You can also make a weapon design sheet like this on Novel AI.

Plus, here is the experiment with the background illustration. To be honest, this is totally insane for me. I can't believe I can generate these images from the AI.

It can generate various image style and you can create the image in the style of emoji or vector art as well.

They also have an image to image function which you can generate images from your source image. You can make a variation of the original image using Novel AI by uploading your image and input the text prompt. Here is my experiment with my own art.

You can use the image to image function to create images from your doodle as well.

They also have this interesting function that you can draw an image then add text prompt to generate picture.

Finally, I almost forgot to mention that Novel AI can make NSFW or hentai images in anime style. I've tried generating some NSFW images and I was shocked that Novel AI can produce quite high quality NSFW images. I may not upload any images here, but you can see the results at the website aibooru.online. [WARNING NSFW IMAGES]

To generate images in Novel AI, you must pay at least 10 USD each month. The 10 USD tier grants you 1,000 Anlas per month (Anlas is a credit used to generate images). One image will cost you roughly 4-5 Anlas to create. Other features, such as variation, will cost you an additional 14-15 Anlas.

There are also various subscription plans available. If you pay 25 USD per month, you will receive 10,000 Anlas each month, as well as the ability to make an unlimited number of small-sized images without using Anlas. (I also subscribe to this tier, and I'm satisfied with it so far.)

I'm still in the experimentation phase in the Novel AI and more info will be added later.

However, there are many controversies surrounding Novel AI since many people have accused them of using illustrations to do machine learning without the artists' permission. AI-generated images and copyright are complicated issues and are continuously being debated on the internet. As a result, you may use it at your own risk.

Midjourney

Generate art via Discord bot

Artbreeder

Blend your ideas and breed them into art

Waifu Labs

Create anime portraits in 4 easy steps

Crypko

Generate and fuse anime characters using AI

Cre8tiveAI

One-stop-service AI for art process

Final Thought

In conclusion, AI can be a useful tool for artists. It can help generate ideas for characters, backgrounds, and props for us.

We can see how AI technologies are being applied to the field of art. Our imagination and knowledge have been widened by AI and deep learning technologies.

Some artists even said that they're afraid their art career will be replaced by AI. However, I personally think in the other way.

This AI technology is a game changer to help artist work much more easier. As an artist we just have to learn how to use them to maximize our artistic potential to the fullest!

PS. If you feel uneasy about the art AI, let's read this interview with the art company CEOs and learn my strategies to thrive as an artist for the AI revolution.