Just think of how you can convert a simple text prompt into a hyper-real graphic, animate a still photo with a click, or even convert a scratch graphic into a polished design without the use of any traditional tool for visual content. AI is no longer just a shortcut; it’s becoming the new basics in today’s visual content creator toolkit.
But, with so many options, how do you know which AI tools are truly game-changers?
This article by DATAFOREST explores the top 9 AI platforms that are helping marketers create, edit, and approach visual content differently. If you’re a designer, a marketer, or the founder of a startup, these tools are defining the future of digital creativity.
These tools are focused on leveraging the distinct applications of AI for the creation, editing, or enhancement of visual media, enabling marketers to select the most suitable tool for their individual professional needs. Book a call with our consultant to get a detailed consultation on how to adopt the right AI solution for your specific needs.
What is the purpose of using AI visual content tools?
80% of marketers use images in all of their posts on social media, meaning the demand for engaging visuals is ever-increasing and that’s the reason why AI tools are needed for streamlining the content creation process.
Over 50% of marketers report spending over 10 hours a week creating visual content. Generative AI allows marketers, designers, and creators to create professional-quality content at greater speeds. According to HubSpot research, marketers can save 3+ hours on their content creation tasks when using Gen AI tools.
This means more time for tasks that require a human touch, such as strategy, storytelling, and refining brand aesthetics.
Simultaneously, AI visual tools simplify content creation, allowing startups to create high-quality design without in-house teams. They also boost creativity, with capabilities like one-click background removal, text-to-image synthesis, and video upscaling.
From marketing campaigns to social media and digital ads, AI-driven tools allow creators to work smarter, not harder, to generate eye-catching visual content without the heavy lifting.
Benefits of AI in visual content creation
AI tools do more than accelerate visual content creation. They redefine the way marketers, creators, and designers approach creativity. Here’s how these tools are changing this process.
1. Reducing Production Time
As AI tools handle the routine tasks. Rather than spending hours on background removal or upscaling graphics, tools like Runway ML and PhotoHero produce polished visuals in seconds, freeing creators to focus on developing the ideas behind the content.
2. Unlocking New Creative Possibilities
AI expands what’s possible, particularly for startups and small businesses, letting them produce content that was previously available only to huge corporations. Midjourney, for example, creates pictures and images from text prompts, while Remaker AI turns still photos into moving pictures with hyper-realistic motion—something that used to require advanced editing skills.
3. Customizing Content at Scale
Marketing is a game of personalization, but creating unique assets for different audiences takes time. AI-generated visuals that can instantly adapt to diverse styles and demographics make your targeted campaigns simpler.
4. Bridging the Skills Gap
Small businesses and solo creators can create professional-grade visuals without hiring expensive creative teams.
5. Cost Efficiency Without Compromising Quality
There are costs associated with hiring designers and video editors. AI-driven tools enable small businesses and startups to create high-quality visuals without exceeding the budget, reducing the need for large creative teams while producing high-quality content.
AI is here to boost human creativity, not to replace it. By doing the technical heavy lifting, these tools free creators to explore boundaries, experiment, and make bold concepts a reality at unprecedented speed.
Hugging Face
Hugging Face is a leading platform to host and collaborate on unlimited public models, datasets and applications. It serves as a central hub where developers and researchers can share and access over 1 million pre-trained models across various modalities, including text, image, video, audio, and 3D rendering automation data.
Pros:
- provides access to more than 250,000 datasets;
- access to open-source libraries: tools like Transformers, Diffusers, and Tokenizers support seamless integration and development of machine learning models;
- offers many models and datasets, reducing the need for building from scratch.
Cons:
- code is not always accurate;
- some users reported bugs.
Pricing: free access to public models and datasets; Pro account at $9/month.
Client Ratings: 4.2/5 on Gartner.
Remaker
Remaker is a platform that leverages AI to enhance and transform visual media. It offers a suite of tools designed for both image and video editing, including image to video, facial recognition, AI headshot generator, automated background removal, image upscaler, watermark removal, and smart photo and video enhancement.
Pros:
- ensures confidentiality and minimal risk of data breach;
- no subscription required, users purchase one-time credits;
- 7 tools in a single platform to eliminate manual work.
Cons:
- some of the features, like the image inpainting tool, may also produce inconsistent results that would need fine-tuning.
Pricing: free credits available; 530 credits at $9.99.
Client Ratings: no info.
Runway
Runway is an AI-driven visual content creation platform for marketers, designers, and creators. It offers features to help improve and enhance the creative workflow: AI-enabled video editing, rotoscoping, inpainting, text-to-image models, AI-driven animation tools, image to image, and others.
Pros:
- shared collaboration in real time across teams;
- browser-based, no developer skill required to install.
Cons:
- limited customization options;
Pricing: free plan available; Standard plan at $15 per user per month.
Client Ratings: 4.2/5 on ProductHunt.
Midjourney
Midjourney is an artificial intelligence tool that generates quality and artistic images from text prompts. The team focuses on design, human infrastructure, and AI to stretch the limits of creative expression. It uses deep learning models to instantly convert user descriptions into visual content. This tool is widely used by graphic designers, digital artists, and marketers who wish to create one-of-a-kind creative images in no time. The platform operates through Discord, which makes it extremely easy to use for all levels, especially beginners. Each day, Midjourney users generate approximately 2.5 million images.
The main feature is AI image generation. All it takes for users to get hyper-realistic and highly creative visuals is to simply type out the description of the image, with the model converting those words into an image.
Pros:
- customization options allow users to adjust the style, mood, and complexity of generated visuals.
- high-quality text-to-image generation in different styles;
- produces unique artwork.
Cons:
- limited free access;
- AI-generated visuals can sometimes be unpredictable.
Pricing: free trial available only in mobile apps; Subscription starts at $10/month.
Client Ratings: 4.5/5 on ProductHunt.
HeyGen
HeyGen is an AI-powered platform to generate videos without the need for video editing skills, professional cameras, or video staff. All you need to do is choose an avatar and write a script, and HeyGen will create your video in just a few minutes. It is ideal for small businesses, new content creators, and creative marketing agencies looking to streamline their content creation workflow.
Pros:
Diverse avatars and 175 languages: creators can pick from over 100 realistic and customizable avatars with lip-sync functionality in more than 175 languages.
Cons:
Limited advanced editing features and minimal integration with other tools.
Pricing: free plan includes 3 videos per month; Creator plan at $29/month.
Client Ratings: 4.8/5 on Capterra.
Cartoonifier
Cartoonifier is a user-friendly AI tool that cartoonizes photo images in just a few clicks. It uses deep learning algorithms to analyze images in real-time and generates AI-based illustrations that add a fun, artistic twist to standard photos. This tool is used by social media influencers, marketers, and content creators who want to enhance their visuals with AI.
Pros:
- uses AI models trained on numerous artistic styles to instantly convert your photos into cartoon-style images;
- easy and fast upload process;
- no previous experience or skills required.
Cons:
- basic photo editing since Cartoonifier is primarily designed for transforming pictures into cartoon images and does not offer more advanced editing capabilities;
- some users say that it produces cartoon images that don’t fully match their expectations.
Pricing: free plan available; Premium plan at $9.99/month.
Client Ratings: 4.7/5 on TrustPilot.
Prompt Hunt
Prompt Hunt is an AI art creation platform designed to help users generate high-quality AI visuals by providing curated prompts for AI art tools like MidJourney, DALLE, and Stable Diffusion. It serves as both a prompt marketplace and an AI content generator, allowing users to search, purchase, and sell comprehensive prompts for content creation.
Pros:
- creates AI-powered designs in a matter of seconds;
- easy to use;
- enables users to save and share templates for AI prompts to speed up art creation.
Cons:
- since it’s a marketplace, not every prompt produces equally good results, some need tweaking;
- it is one of the visual content tools without direct AI image editing features but with prompt optimization.
Pricing: subscription from $4.99/month.
Client Ratings: 4.8/5 on ProductHunt.
PhotoHero
PhotoHero is an advanced AI-driven photo editing platform designed to swap people, faces, and backgrounds. It uses artificial intelligence to automate background removal, face enhancement, photo retouching, and object removal, making it useful for photographers, marketers, and social media content creators.
Pros:
- smart color correction and photo enhancement;
- no specific skills needed.
Cons:
- limited manual control;
- object removal feature may not work well in complicated backgrounds.
Pricing: free trial available; Subscription from $10/month.
Client Ratings: 4.0/5 on ProductHunt.
Replicate
Replicate is a cloud-based platform to run, deploy, and also fine-tune AI models to generate and restore images and videos, without the need for advanced programming skills. It offers a simplified interface for leveraging state-of-the-art ML models. It’s ideal for developers, designers, and content creators looking to integrate AI into their workflows, without the hassle of setting up complex infrastructure.
Pros:
- access to thousands of ready-to-use AI models with production-ready APIs;
- users can use any model with just one line of code, and if they want to do something more complex, users can fine-tune existing models or deploy their own custom code;
- SDXL is an image model that can create images of a specific person/object/style.
Cons:
- technical skills and API knowledge needed;
- performance varies by model.
Pricing: pay-as-you-go model billed by the second.
Client Ratings: 4.0/5
AI tools comparison table
Endnote
These AI tools range from groundbreaking text-to-image platforms to advanced video editing services, showcasing how automation and creativity can take center stage together. With their help, businesses can save time and money, and unleash new creative possibilities in order to remain visually competitive in an ever-evolving digital landscape.
Of course, choosing the right tool will depend on the specific needs of your company. While some tools are geared towards AI-animated images, others apply real-time photo enhancement, or use deep learning models for design. Knowing these differences will allow you to make an informed decision.
While AI will continue to be developed further, nothing replaces the human touch when it comes to creativity. These tools won’t replace designers and marketers; they will help them, taking care of technical tasks and freeing up time for strategy, creative storytelling, and innovation.
If you are prepared for the AI content generation journey but need guidance, get in touch with DATAFOREST’s team of experts to identify the ideal-fit solution for you. Submit a form and we will get back to you soon.
FAQ
What are the AI tools that help you automatically create visuals from textual descriptions?
AI-powered tools such as Midjourney, Runway, and Prompt Hunt create high-quality visuals from text prompts.
How effective is artificial intelligence in generating realistic 3D models?
AI creates detailed 3D models depending on the model used, data quality, fine-tuning, etc. Platforms like Hugging Face and Replicate provide access to AI models for 3D generation.
What factors affect the quality of AI-generated images and videos?
Model training data, resolution, prompt quality, and the type of AI algorithm (i.e., GANs vs. diffusion models) are the key factors. Some tools even allow fine-tuning to improve results.
How is AI image generation different from traditional graphic design?
AI creates content by turning text prompts into videos and audio or modifying existing content, while traditional design involves manual editing and specialized software like Photoshop to edit images or create graphics.
Which is better for generating visual content: GAN-based neural networks or Transformers?
GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks) excel at real image generation, while Transformers are made for detailed text-conditioned generation. Which one to choose depends on the use case.
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