The week before, OpenAI closed the waiting list to access its DALL-E 2 text-to-picture system. Just sign up, and you can use all the features of the AI to generate the image you want.
The first version of DALL-E was launched in January 2021, and at the time, it was a real breakthrough in the field. You could say it was the first significant project that could turn a textual description into a specified image.
Since then, however, DALL-E has had many competitors competing with them regarding timeliness and image quality. For example, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are much easier for everyone to access, which detracts from OpenAI’s offering.
What problems does DALL-E have?
It is also worth noting that OpenAI receives funding from Microsoft, so they have to reckon with the opinion of the techno-giant. The fact that OpenAI was cautious about the public release of DALL-E. Some experts say the system can generate potentially unacceptable and dangerous content. For example, the AI can create pictures on potentially difficult topics – material for harassment, propaganda, disinformation, and more.
In addition, some experts are concerned about bias issues. For example, AI is racist and sexist. This is because, for its training, the AI processed databases of images taken from the web. Many of the pictures on the web can be very unrepresentative. For example, ask the system to draw an image of the CEO, which will usually produce an image of a white male.
OpenAI has taken several steps to combat this effect, including filtering sexual and violent images from its training data and refusing to generate images based on explicit prompts. But the company has also been criticized for what some see as an overly restrictive or clumsy approach to harm mitigation.
The company also said it is already testing an API for DALL-E that will allow companies to create their applications and plug-ins using the system’s results in the future. This could open up many commercial opportunities for the company and make it easier to interact with other companies that want to buy their services.
How much does DALL-E cost?
Register and sign up for their services if you want to try out DALL-E. You will get 50 credits at the beginning and another 15 free credits every month. Each credit can be used to create a single image, a variation of an image, or for “inpainting” and “outpainting” (editing the content of an image or expanding the image beyond the existing borders). If you need more credits, you can buy a bundle of 115 credits for $15.
