Google has its own text-to-image AI model called Imagen, with the current version being Imagen 2. It’s well worth checking out, and even if you aren’t a developer or a business, you can try Imagen 2 out for free using Google Cloud. Here’s what you need to know.

What Is Google’s Imagen 2?

Imagen 2 is an AI text-to-image diffusion model developed by Google and released on December 13, 2023. It adds to the growing list of AI text-to-image generators, such as DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, all of which can instantly create amazing images from a text description.

Imagen 2 has made a huge leap forward from its predecessor (Imagen), and provides a fully functioning AI image generator that can create artistic and photorealistic outputs like any of its competitors. It’s hosted under Google’s Vertex AI suite of tools, which you can access with a Google Cloud account.

By comparison, the first version of Imagen, available from May 2022, had a limited beta release through an app called AI Test Kitchen. Users could only play around with generating cityscapes or monster characters that looked like something out of a Pixar animated film.

Imagen 2 boasts features such as inpainting and outpainting, which gives you the ability to add content to a generated image or extend the image beyond the borders. This is a feature that DALL-E 2 also has, but what sets Imagen apart is the option to use a reference image when creating an image.

If you’re seeking a text-to-image generator that can tackle the problem of AI-generated hands, it’s worth exploring Imagen 2’s capabilities. The results are still not perfect, but it is an area that Google has paid particular attention to when developing the tool.

How to Try Imagen 2 for Yourself

Imagen 2 is squarely aimed at developers and businesses, but if you’re an individual, you can still try it by signing up for a free Google Cloud account. Click the Start Free button in the top right corner of the page, then follow the instructions to set up a billing account.

You will need to add a credit card for billing, but you shouldn’t need to worry about future charges. Google clearly states that you will not be billed automatically after the free trial ends.

Once you’ve created an account, click the Console button on the Google Cloud home page, then click the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines) in the top-left corner. In the menu, click on Vertex AI Vision. Once on this page, click Studio from the left-hand panel or click the Open Studio button on the right.

How Did Google Train the Imagen AI Model?

Behind the scenes, Imagen was trained using the publicly available dataset called LAION-400M, in combination with internal datasets. Not all AI companies choose to make this information public; one example being DALL-E 2.

The use of datasets has also become a controversial topic, due in part to its practice of scraping millions of images from the internet. Artists in particular have criticized AI companies for not gaining consent from the owner of an image or artwork before using it to train its AI models.

If you’re concerned about your images, you can find out if your image was used to train an AI model and opt out.

Imagen 2 Is Fun to Play Around With

It wasn’t going to be long before heavyweight tech companies like Google started experimenting with AI models. Imagen 2 is yet another text-to-image AI generator that will no doubt be a lot of fun to play with.

Create a free Google Cloud account to give it a go, and make sure to register your interest and download Google’s AI Test Kitchen app to see more projects in development before anyone else.