Initially announced at Meta Connect 2023, held last September, Meta’s image-generative artificial intelligence is now open to users. We wanted to evaluate the creative performance of Meta’s Imagine AI, which has a very intuitive interface.
Meta wishes to deploy the new functionalities of its artificial intelligence within its entire ecosystem. This is already the case in the United States, where the firm already allows users to access the service from its instant messaging applications: WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. However, updates are slow to arrive for a large number of Internet users. For those forgotten, the Imagine With Meta platform is online and offers access to the service through a web browser.
Access denied to Imagine With Meta from France © Meta
Based on Emu, an image generation model designed by Meta, the service is not accessible to everyone. Some geographic restrictions apply, but can be bypassed by using a VPN, such as CyberGhost or NordVPN. We will select a server located in the United States in the VPN used to unblock access to Imagine with Meta. If the platform requires connection to a Meta account to execute the prompts, it should be noted that it is entirely possible to connect to an account created in France.
This new tool for creating images using artificial intelligence is very intuitive to use. Devoid of any additional functionality, the interface only offers a free text entry field. This operation is reminiscent of that of the OpenAI Dall-E tool when used with ChatGPT.
The speed of completing a task with Meta’s AI is astonishing. Only six seconds passed between sending a prompt and displaying the corresponding image. It took Dall-E 22 seconds to fully execute the same query via ChatGPT.
Image generated in six seconds by Meta’s AI © Meta / Imagine with AI
Image generated in 22 seconds by Dall-E with ChatGPT © OpenAI / Dall-E
For each new prompt, Meta’s AI offers five images, which can be downloaded by the user. By developing this new AI tool, Meta has erected a few barriers, as a safeguard against abusive use.
Imagine with Meta introduces limitations to its tool
For example, it is not possible to validate the prompt “Smartphone, in the style of the painter Andy Warhol“. In this same register, Meta’s AI refuses any request relating to a historical or known character, whether living or not.